Let’s start this sorry tale with a quote from Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, on why global warming means colder and snowier winters in Europe and North America:
“While the emerging impact of greenhouse gases is an important factor in the changing Arctic, what was not fully recognised until now is that a combination of an unusual warm period due to natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns working together has disrupted the memory and stability of the Arctic climate system, resulting in greater ice loss than earlier climate models predicted,” says Dr Overland.
“The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” he says.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100611093710.htm
That’s the official climate science line in 2010. Changes in the atmospheric circulation above the Arctic lead to colder and snowier winters, thanks to global warming. All clear? Good. Now, let’s rewind eleven years . . .
Back in the balmy, El Nino days of 1999, a study from NASA GISS’s Gavin Schmidt, Drew Schindell and Ron Miller told a very different story. Back then, when winters were mild and largely snow-free, climate science was coming to the opposite conclusion:
Why are winters warming up so much faster over Northern Hemisphere continents than over the rest of the globe? A new study by NASA researchers in the June 3 issue of the journal Nature is the first to link the well-documented large degree of North America and Eurasia winter warming and the associated wind changes to rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
According to this climate study, warmer winters were caused by . . . changes in atmospheric circulation over the Arctic!
Shindell found a probable reason for warming Northern Hemisphere winters by studying the polar vortex in his climate model. Over the North Pole, there is a polar vortex created in the stratosphere, the part of the atmosphere that starts more than six miles above the Earth’s surface. The vortex arises because the North Pole is completely dark and extremely cold in the winter, creating a large temperature difference between the polar region and the mid-latitudes.
Shindell’s model predicts that if greenhouse gases continue to increase, winter in the Northern Hemisphere will continue to warm. “In our model, we’re seeing a very large signal of global warming and it’s not a naturally occurring thing. It’s most likely linked to greenhouse gases,” he said.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed ‘science’ journal, Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399452a0.html
Schmidt and others also published commentary on their study here: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_04/
Although inexplicably, for such a momentous study, published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals, there was one person with a keen interest in climate science who didn’t spot it:
With the help of the severe weather analyst John Mason and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team(1), I’ve been through as much of the scientific literature as I can lay hands on.
That’s right – George Monbiot and the “Climate Science Rapid Response Team,” in their exhaustive search concerning atmospheric circulation, global warming and the effect they have on winter in the northern hemisphere, apparently missed both this major study in a leading science journal AND the press releases on NASA’s own website.
What’s particularly comical about this is that the “Climate Science Rapid Response Team” claims to have scientists from NASA working for them, which means that an a team of climate scientists, some of them from NASA, apparently can’t find a relevant study on climate change in a leading scientific journal. http://www.climaterapidresponse.org/about.php
So what do have? One agency of the US government says global warming will lead to warmer winters due to alteration of atmospheric circulation over the Arctic. Another agency says the opposite. Meanwhile, one of the most prominent pro-AGW journalists can’t even seem to find clearly relevant studies in a major science journal, even with the help of a “Climate Science Rapid Response Team”.
All of which leads one to ask the obvious question: Who’s running this circus?
hauntingthelibrary 
“Who’s running this circus?”
The clowns, of course.
Circus or Pantomime?
It’s global warming. Oh no it isn’t!
Oh yes it is.
Oh no it isn’t.
Even funnier is that YOU see it so much better than that crack AGW team.
ROFLMAO!
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More to the point, what are they going to say when we get some mild winters again (as we surely will, these things are cyclical)? Having told us cold winters are what we must expect from ‘global warming’, will they attempt another 180 degree turn, and claim the warm winters are also down to ‘climate change’?
I hope they do, because people aren’t stupid. And the mad pirouettes that the AGW crowd are performing will make the sceptical case best of all. Nothing destroys a political movement quicker than being laughed at and derided as fools.
Brilliant, I just wish that I had found the link and posted it when I first saw the Monbiot bilge. Not that it would have got through the moderatorburo, of course as I have been on pre-mod for a couple of years.
Excellent link, found via Bishop Hill.
Ta
I posted the relevant links on Monbiots Guardian page comments and was promptly banned.
Can’t have freedom of speech now, can we? 🙂
The poor dears! I bet they’re in a right pickle over this. As SM often says though, you have to watch the pea under the thimble. I’m betting we’re going to see a slew of new papers, published in Nature, resetting the AGW conclusion to colder winters. The central narrative won’t change, of course.
Who’s running this circus? Uh, that guy. Doctor…Doctor…it’s right on the tip of my tongue. Oh, yeah:
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Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.
Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.
Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
So AGW is unfalsifiable, which means that it isn’t science – bet we already knew that.
Here are the conclusions of the 120,000 world famous scientist who produced the IPCC Apolyctic Revelations 4 for us:
Fewer cold outbreaks; fewer, shorter, less intense cold spells / cold extremes in winter.
VL (consistent across model projections) Northern Europe, South Asia, East Asia
17
L (consistent with warmer mean temperatures)
Most other regions18
17. §11.3.3.2, PRUDENCE, Kjellström et al. (2007), §11.4.3.2, Gao et al.
(2002), Rupa Kumar et al. (2006)
There you have it, the IPCCs “scenarios” with a 90+% likelihood of “Fewer cold outbreaks; fewer, shorter, less intense cold spells / cold extremes in winter. ”
Page 862 IPCC AR4 WG1, and little Georgie Porgie couldn’t find anything in the literature while all the time it was in their own bible.
There is an interesting probability problem here though, what is the likelihood of the three worst winters in 40 years living memory following consequently directly after a report by 200,000 of the world’s cleverest ever scientists telling us that there was a 90% chance that all our winters would be shorter, warmer and have less bad weather events for the forceable future.
Secondly what is the probability that a zoologist eco-warrior was unable to find this gem of a prediction in his own bible. Disingenuous? Moi?
I am at a loss to understand why Georgie Porgie couldn’t find references to warmer shorter winters. I looked up the IPCC Apolyctic Report 4 to see what 120,000 of the world’s cleverest scientists had put in as their predicition. Here it is, complete with citation papers that foretold there predictions:
“Fewer cold outbreaks; fewer, shorter, less intense cold spells / cold extremes in winter.
VL (consistent across model projections)
Northern Europe, South Asia, East Asia (17)
L (consistent with warmer mean temperatures)
Most other regions (18)”
17 §11.3.3.2, PRUDENCE, Kjellström et al. (2007), §11.4.3.2, Gao et al.
(2002), Rupa Kumar et al. (2006)
18 §11.1.3
Not that difficult to find really, there’s no equivocation, 90% certainty for Northern Europe and 66% certain for the rest of the world. No mention that we could have 1500 years of freezing winters and it the world would still be warming.
Now, what are the chances of the 200,000 brainiest scientists the planet has ever known predicting a scenario of warm short winters, with reduced severe cold events being followed immediately by three very cold winters with multiple severe cold events?
Moreover, what are the chances that one of the countries cleverest zoologist not being able to find these predictions in the holy bible of climate activism the IPCC AR 2007?
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Apologies for double post, thought it had been lost.
hey guys,
i’d encourage you to read this post (and the comments, which come from people on different sides of the AGW discussion)
http://skepticalscience.com/December-2009-record-cold-spells.htm
also, i don’t know the specifics of these two papers since i haven’t read them beyond what you post here, but i know that in fields like cell biology you’ll have a paper describe a theory for a mechanism that, 10 years later, will be refuted and updated. that’s science. and both papers could be published in nature. no doubt the AGW models and theories associated with climate mechanics will only get better in 10 years time and hopefully can better answer questions we have.
happy new year!
o
Hi Omar,
You make a perfectly valid point and I quite agree with you. The way science works, one study may find one thing, and then a few years later, other researchers will revisit the study and find errors or assumption which skewed the study. They will find the opposite is actually the case.
However, with climate science we don’t have “experiments” that can be proved or disproved (you can’t fit the earth and its weather systems into a lab). So you have computer modelling, which takes whole series of data and assumptions and runs them against a set scenario. This is not empirical science, it’s educated guesswork.
We are also asked to spend billions and billions on schemes which, if (as I obviously believe) the theories are later seen to wrong, will be totally and utterly wasted. i have no problems with “no regrets” policies, such as adopting nuclear power on a much wider basis, and exporting its use to the developing world so they can share in the benefits of modernization, but let’s be prudent and scientific about this.
As you point out, science often disproves earlier theories by revealing incorrect assumptions that skewed the studies. Let’s not spend billions before we find out that’s the case with AGW.
Omar, you’re correct, absolutely, science does move forward by incremental steps. The phenomenom here isn’t that it’s moved forward, far from it. In this case the theory has not matched the observations, in real science if that happens, people try to understand why and adjust the theory accordingly, what we have in climate science is people adjusting the observations and keeping the theory static.
“Climate Science Rapid Response Team” would be more aptly renamed to Climate Science Precipitous Response Team
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