Floods not linked to climate change shocker

Posted by William M. Connolley on November 21, 2009
(22)
More »

In shocking news just in, record heavy rain in the Lakes and extensive flooding has not been linked to global warming. Dr Bogus, spokesman for the Made-Up Institute of Twaddle, said “This is completely unprecedented. Normally, any unusual – or even merely somewhat uncommon – weather event is immeadiately linked to global warming. All of the usual Pinko suspects have failed us in this case. The best we have so far is “David Balmforth, a flooding expert at the Institution of Civil Engineers, said deluges on a similar scale will become more frequent as a result of climate change.” and that is very weak. But in breaking news, the Torygraph has supplied the void with “The flooding in Cumbria is part of a pattern of weather which shows that global warming is occurring faster than anyone expected, says Geoffrey Lean.”

Oh lordy, that last one is pretty awful. I was hoping not to have to see it, but now I have. It sez Three factors cause heavier storms as the climate heats up. As it gets hotter, more energy is injected into the climate. There is a sharper contrast between land and the sea (which warms more slowly), causing stronger winds and greater instability. And as the seas do heat, more water evaporates from them – and comes down as heavier rain. Can you see the obvious problem? Yes that’s right: if it was correct, there would be an enormous seasonal cycle in rainfall, with far more in the summer than winter. As it happens, there are places where this is true – Cairns, for example, according to [[Wet Seaason]]. But the UK isn’t like that – there is more rain in winter, as we all knew. Which immeadiately tells you that the primary driver of rainfall in the UK is not temperature. Global warming might produce more rainfall in the UK – but it might not. If you were relying on the interseasonal T-PPN regression as a proxy for the long-term T-PPN relation, you’d predict *less* rainfall as the climate warms.

Incidentally, whilst writing this I ran across:

Isn’t that nice. It’s from the http://www.skepticalscience.com/ site, originally from An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 by D. M. Murphy et al..

Oh yes: I’ll get on to the emails some time.

(22)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 bigcitylib
    2009/11/21

    Write something on “the hack”. Was Phil Jones “sexing up” a graph? Or not.

    [I thought the comments on McLean et al. were more amusing -W]

  2. #2 Steve L
    2009/11/21

    I like the skepticalscience website. Quite a few pictures for illiterates like me.

  3. #3 David B. Benson
    2009/11/21

    Pul-ease, not another blog contaminated by “the hack of the century”…

  4. #4 Jonathan Baxter
    2009/11/22

    Nice to know the Earth’s total heat content in 1950 was 0.

    Also nice to know our efforts to decarbonize the economy are based on Phil Jones’ gut:

    “Bottom line – their[sic] is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility.”

    This was in response to an email from Tom Wigley (funny how Wigley’s skepticism never saw the light of day. How many times has realclimate excoriated the public for questioning the hockeystick?):

    “Phil,

    I have just read the M&M stuff critcizing MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of work — an opinion I have held for some time. Presumably what you have done with Keith is better? — or is it? I get asked about this a lot. Can you give me a brief heads up? Mike is too deep into this to be helpful.

    Tom.”

  5. #5 Alastair McDonald
    2009/11/22

    W.,

    It’s not that simple. To get rain you must have cooling to condense the water vapour. In simple terms, during the summer, the air is heated an absorbs more water vapour. In the autumn the air cools and the water vapour condenses falling as rain. In the spring the solar flux is similar to that in autumn, but because the air has been dried during the winter, all you get is April showers as the sea begins to warm.

    Winter rainfall is more important from an agricultural POV, because it does not evaporate from the land as soon as it falls. Moreover, winter rain will runoff the land into reservoirs where it can be collected for use in the following summer.

    Of course no ‘real’ scientist (RealClimate perhaps) will say that these record floods have been cause by climate change, because they cannot prove it. But the engineers, who deal with what works, not the theory, are already saying (on Sky News) that these events will only get worse as a result of climate change.

    Do you ever wonder why the IPCC has not been more successful in persuading people to take action against global warming? It is because when disaster like the Cumbrian flooding happen, or the collapse of Larsen B, or the Californian fires, or Katrina the scientists say they do not know whether it is due to AGW. Why should anyone listen to them when they hesitate over simple questions like that?

  6. #6 Eli Rabett
    2009/11/22

    JB, take another look at that graph, the y axis does not say heat content, but heat content anomaly. Now visit your friend Google to see why you just made a very foolish mistake

  7. #7 P. Lewis
    2009/11/22

    Eli, the figure W supplies does say “Earth Heat Content” (i.e. no “anomaly”). However, the link W supplies to the original has the caption “Figure 1: Total Earth Heat Content anomaly from 1950…”. But the zero sort of gives it away anyway without having to navigate away from W.

  8. #8 John Cook
    2009/11/22

    Hi, John here from skepticalscience.com. Just to clear up the Heat Content versus Heat Content Anomaly issue – an older version of that graph erroneously had the title “Earth Total Heat Content”. Someone recently pointed out to me that the figure should be labelled heat content anomaly, not total heat content (of course the planet’s heat content wasn’t zero in the 1950s). I’ve since updated the graph’s heading to correct the oversight. If anyone isn’t seeing “Anomaly”, they must be viewing an older cached version of the image. Apologies for the confusion.

    JB, the evidence for man-made global warming isn’t based on whether there was a MWP or LIA. In fact, it’s got nothing to do with Phil Jone’s gut. The evidence that human CO2 is causing global warming is because direct measurements (both satellites measuring outgoing longwave radiation and surface measurements of downwelling longwave radiation) show an enhanced greenhouse effect at CO2 wavelengths:
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

  9. #9 P. Lewis
    2009/11/22

    Ah! That’s better. Anomalies everywhere now.

  10. #10 Rattus Norvegicus
    2009/11/22

    Re: the comments on the McLean, et. al. comment. Ouch! and congrats to Tamino, et. al. for getting this piece of crap shot down.

  11. #11 MarkB
    2009/11/23

    Jonathan Baxter (#4),

    “funny how Wigley’s skepticism never saw the light of day.”

    You folks need to get your story straight. Wigley’s part of the conspiracy, remember?

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/

    Context is important. Email exchanges between scientists over the years entail sufficient ambiguity for skeptics to create all sorts of sinister interpretations. In one email, Wigley is an honest skeptic challenging the evil alarmists. In another, Wigley is an evil alarmist trying to manipulate data to support the alarmist agenda.

    Now if the skeptic crowd revealed their personal emails to us, that might be moderately more interesting.

  12. #12 Adam
    2009/11/23

    “Now if the skeptic crowd revealed their personal emails to us, that might be moderately more interesting.”

    http://tinyurl.com/yzj52uy

  13. #13 lumpy
    2009/11/23

    In regards to the English storm

    ”

    * News
    * UK news
    * Weather

    Storm batters southern England, bringing floods and 100mph winds

    Gale warning for Scotland as heavy rain heads north
    UK flooding and extreme weather – live blog

    * Buzz up!
    * Digg it

    * Amelia Hill
    * The Observer, Sunday 15 November 2009
    * Article history

    Gale-force winds of up to 100mph battered Britain yesterday as one of the worst storms of the year swept across the country.

    Wales, southern and eastern England bore the brunt of the weather. Winds reaching speeds of 70mph were recorded in parts of London and the home counties, strong enough to cause property damage and bring down trees and branches.

    “This is pretty severe,” said Stephen Davenport, a forecaster with MeteoGroup UK, the weather forecasting operation of the Press Association.

    “It’s quite rare for the winds to be that strong inland; it certainly doesn’t happen very often. The storm developed off the west coast and was fed by the still warm autumn sea temperatures.”"

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/15/storm-weather-floods-warning

    Has he got that right?

  14. #14 Scientific_Doomsday_Mania
    2009/11/23

    Scientific Doomsday Mania
    by
    Amitakh Stanford
    22nd November 2009

    There is a doomsday message that is swiftly gaining global acceptance. The new wave is clothed in acceptable clichés and has won over the support of many of the respected scientific communities.

    Unlike most other doomsday messages, this one is supposedly based upon scientific evidence. The scientific “doomsdayers” wear masks and pretend that they are predicting calamities based on hard evidence. This lulls the unsuspecting public into absolute belief and acceptance of the doomsdayers’ ravings.

    If the same message were given in a spiritual setting, the adherents would probably be encouraged to turn to God in preparation for the final days. Generally, scientists have sneered at and mocked spiritual predictions regarding the end times, and the same scientists have convinced the general public to do likewise. Further, governments of the world use their police powers to suppress, restrict, or even eliminate these spiritual-based groups. Scientists have now one-upped the spiritual believers by supporting their dire predictions of calamity with supposed scientific evidence. Using their scientific clout, they have now convinced most of the world leaders to meet in Copenhagen. The stated agenda of the gathering is to halt global warming with a unified and urgent approach.

    People may remember that there have been similar gatherings to solve the global economic crisis. In those meetings, every leader attending was told to boost their economies by stimulus spending. By and large, the world leaders have dutifully followed those dictates. One might ask: Is the global recession over due to this unified approach – or is it deepening? Many thinking economists have finally realized the latter to be the case.

    [...]

    Were the carbon traders truly concerned that global warming is a seriously urgent issue, they could perhaps justify following their untested carbon-trading notion. But if it were an urgent situation, why would they offer a solution that will take decades to take effect? If they have decades to work on the solution, by definition, it cannot be that urgent. And, if they have decades to implement their plan, could they not spend at least a few years or even a few months openly and transparently debating which course of action will save the planet from its imminent death?

    To demonstrate the absurdity of the current “green” position, consider that they are proposing massive increases in nuclear power because it is supposed to be carbon friendly. The nuclear proponents do not seem to care about the disposal of nuclear waste from these sites. This means that they are presenting an extremely short-sighted solution, which is not really a solution at all. Besides, the proponents of expanding nuclear power want to tremendously restrict who can and who cannot use nuclear power. For instance, Iran and North Korea are presently being ostracized for, among other things, having nuclear-power programmes. This is a glaring instance where part of the real agenda of the ruling elite shows through; the nuclear proponents are not as concerned about global warming as they are with political dominance.

    As indicated earlier, humans are only marginally responsible for global warming. The hotter sun is undeniable, and it is the main reason for global warming.

    [...]

    This would be all well and good if it could be believed that scientists are acting in the people’s best interests. But, since when have scientists been assumed to be altruistic? Why is it accepted that they will only act in the best interests of humans? And why should it be accepted that the scientists are correct about human causes of global warming?

    [...]

    The carbon-trading schemes, and other emissions-based solutions presented by the ruling elite’s scientific doomsdayers, will not solve global warming. But, if they get their way, they will change the lives of people for the worse.

  15. #15 Paul Kelly
    2009/11/24

    Now that George Monbiot has called for Phil Jones’s resignation, could you comment on the FOIA zip file story?

    [{{cn}} -W]

  16. #16 Jonathan Baxter
    2009/11/24

    Eli #6: The graph has been altered since I made that comment. There was no “anomaly” on the original.

  17. #17 Jonathan Baxter
    2009/11/24

    RE #8: Interesting – one’s cache may reveal more than one thinks. I explicitly checked both the caption and the axis label before posting my remark (I knew it was supposed to be “anomaly” – was kinda surprised that the original author made what Eli described as a “foolish” mistake, and that William hadn’t noticed.).

    As for Phil Jones’ gut being the only source of evidence for GW – I am not claiming that. But the IPCC devoted a lot of trees to this stuff, so they obviously think it is relevant. And come on: do you really think his response to Wigley, and Wigley’s silence are examples of good, honest, science?

  18. #18 Luke Warmer
    2009/11/24

    Apologies for being on-topic!

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8376031.stm

    Warm conveyors and all that.

    [Nice. Thanks -W]

  19. #19 John Mashey
    2009/11/24

    Amitakh Stanford has spammed this all over the place.

    Do something nice for them.

    [Aliens and the super powers? Sounds like the Laundry to me -W]

  20. #20 Adam
    2009/11/24

    “Warm conveyors and all that.

    [Nice. Thanks -W]”

    If it’s weather you’re discussing, Philip’s your man.
    He’s got quite a good grasp of climate, too (see his CET for example). ;)

  21. #21 jay
    2009/11/26

    In shocking news just in, record heavy rain in the Lakes and extensive flooding has not been linked to global warming. Dr Bogus, spokesman for the Made-Up Institute of Twaddle, said “This is completely unprecedented. Normally, any unusual – or even merely somewhat uncommon – weather event is immeadiately linked to global warming

    Funny how a run of really good weather is never linked to ‘global warming’ or CO2 by these same people

    Perhaps its the Goldilocks effect.

  22. #22 abhishek
    2011/07/04

    sir i just want to say that how much time we have or our earth have…………………