Arguments
Does cold weather disprove global warming?
What the science says...
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A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures. |
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Climate Myth...
It's freaking cold!
"Austria is today seeing its earliest snowfall in history with 30 to 40 centimetres already predicted in the mountains. Such dramatic falls in temperatures provide superficial evidence for those who doubt that the world is threatened by climate change." (Mail Online)
It's easy to confuse current weather events with long-term climate trends, and hard to understand the difference between weather and climate. It's a bit like being at the beach, trying to figure out if the tide is rising or falling just by watching individual waves roll in and out. The slow change of the tide is masked by the constant churning of the waves.
In a similar way, the normal ups and downs of weather make it hard to see slow changes in climate. To find climate trends you need to look at how weather is changing over a longer time span. Looking at high and low temperature data from recent decades shows that new record highs occur nearly twice as often as new record lows.
New records for cold weather will continue to be set, but global warming's gradual influence will make them increasingly rare.
Basic rebuttal written by Jim Meador
Update July 2015:
Here are related lecture-videos from Denial101x - Making Sense of Climate Science Denial
Last updated on 9 July 2015 by pattimer. View Archives
And "climate is weather averaged over time" is more explicit than "weather is not climate."
The 'weather' skeptic's defense will be: "They do it too. If there's a warm spell, the believers will say its due to global warming."
After years of temperature increases, it is harder for believers to restrain such statements. But they should be restrained. Weather IS variable.
In addition, maybe policymakers should just whisper among themselves, about a current event occurring more frequently in a global warming future...to avoid the shortening misquote, that GW caused the event???
WEATHER'S ONE MONTH EFFECT...
...even averaged over a month, local weather anomalies (dynamical fluctuations, more-or-less independent of forced long-term climate change) are much larger than the global mean temperature change of recent decades. Weather fluctuations or 'noise' have a noticeable effect even on monthly-mean global-mean temperature, especially in Northern Hemisphere winter. Weather has little effect on global-mean temperature averaged over several months or more. The primary cause of variations on time scales from a few months to a few years is ocean dynamics, especially the Southern Oscillation (El Nino-La Nina cycle)...
Columbia.edu
COLD EXTREMES HAVE WARMED MORE...
In the last 50 years for the land areas sampled, there has been a significant decrease in the annual occurrence of cold nights and a significant increase in the annual occurrence of warm nights...Decreases in the annual occurrence of cold days and increases in hot days, while widespread, are generally less marked. The distribution of minimum and maximum temperatures have not only shifted to higher values, consistent with overall warming, but the cold extremes have warmed more than the warm extremes over the last 50 years.
IPCC AR4 WGI FAQ 3.3
REGIONAL EXCEPTIONALISM FOR GW FUTURE COLD SPELLS..?
It is also likely that a warmer future climate would have fewer frost days (i.e., nights where the temperature dips below freezing)...There is likely to be a decline in the frequency of cold air outbreaks (i.e., periods of extreme cold lasting from several days to over a week) in (Northern Hemisphere) winter in most areas. Exceptions could occur in areas with the smallest reductions of extreme cold in western North America, the North Atlantic and southern Europe and Asia due to atmospheric circulation changes.
IPCC AR4 WGI FAQ 10.1
...The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continues to climb...
If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows...
The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs. This indicates that much of the nation's warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change...
"One of the messages of the study is that you still get cold days...Winter still comes..."
...analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country....a quality control process at the data center..looks for such potential problems as missing data as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations, or other factors...
Meehl et al, ucar.edu Press Release, November 12, 2009
It looks to me like Watts is really looking at numbers of record highs and lows and not ratios of highs to lows, but nonetheless it would be nice to see a debunking of the debunking. Overall, it would be even nicer to see a global report on record highs vs record lows to see if the trend Meehl et. al. found in the U.S. is really a global phenomena.
"It’s on the calendar. It’s widely advertised. This year, everybody knows about it but the trees. And they are the central characters in Vermont’s annual maple syrup open house this weekend, when tourists descend on the state to watch trees being tapped and sap being boiled.
Sugaring season ended early for many syrup farmers in southern Vermont, sabotaged by unseasonably warm weather." NY Times, 27 March 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/us/27syrup.html)
This is an excellent topic page - and one of the more insidious errors. Our personal experience, and by extension the personal experiences of people we know, tend to have a lot of weight on our judgement. So do more immediate events - what happened last week is more immediate, more forceful in our minds, than what happened a month ago.
We also place extreme weight on extraordinary events: a freak snowstorm gets talked about for years, even if the winter in which it occurred was on average pretty mild!
So for anyone collecting anecdotes or news stories about extreme weather events - I would strongly recommend looking at the statistics to judge the trends. Individual extreme events tell you very little...
So far, in 2010 there have been 337 warm records versus 13 cool records.
In 2009, the ratio was 80 (warm) to 15 (cool).
In 2008, it was 40 (warm) to 18 (cool).
In 2007, it was 133 (warm) to 9 (cool). And so on...
It would be nice to find a more official or peer-reviewed analysis of this.
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(Moved from the other thread about impending ice ages, per the moderator's request)
An interesting review and prediction here, with these words for context:
Extreme events, by definition, are on the tail of the probability distribution. Events in the tail of the distribution are the ones that change most in frequency of occurrence as the distribution shifts due to global warming.
For example, the "hundred year flood" was once something that you had better be aware of, but it was not very likely soon and you could get reasonably priced insurance. But the probability distribution function does not need to shift very far for the 100-year event to be occurring several times a century, along with a good chance of at least one 500-year event.
And a link to Dr. James Hansen - How Warm Was This Summer?
Anything else can be safely ignored.
Also, please give a link to an official source that states that England was the "coldest in...140 years".
Again, anything else will be a waste of your time.
PS It appears you WEREN'T banned, yes ?
I don't readily see that mention of 140 year record cold in England. My mention of it is not that it happened but that I had seen it reported.
I think this web site is interesting. Seems the data there is well corroborated.
Yes, I was banned. Now, lets see if I still am as I hit the Submit button.
Well, look at that I am not banned but ask me, if I am not allowed to correct my mistakes and point out data that question assumptions here, does that demonstrate tolerance or open mindedness on the part of this web sites managers?
By keeping in mind the Comments Policy when posting (especially the part about posting on the appropriate thread), the vast majority of commenters avoid the Deleted Comments bin.
The Yooper
Look here, where all entries are accompanied by references.
Of the 60 entries for all time high temperatures, there were 27 records set within this decade.
Of the 60 entries for all time lows, only 2 record lows were set within the decade.
Score: 27-2. How's your open-mindedness doing these days?
All in all, I don't know what is going to happen. I do think there is a real possibility that without much warning or set trend, the climate could tip, tip drastically and very possibly to more cold. It appears to be like a higher energy phase state of the planet, triggered by global warming that does not correct itself for perhaps 100,000 years. I don't know. I think any one who says they know what the future holds is not adhering to science. Short term trends do not show tipping, do not show any proclivity for sudden change and yet, such has happened for the planet and they are liable to happen again. I, for one, am concerned enough to have two carbon neutral vehicles, to seek wind and photovoltaics for my electricity production, to farm my own food and live in a place that is recorded as having relatively stable weather right through ice ages. I will leave you to do what you want. I think it borders on being criminal to state you know what is going to happen rather than try to weigh evidence in an attempt to find most likely theories. I wish I were strong enough to get folks off the fossil fuel habit and start respecting this biosphere as our heritage and responsibility but I think we are oh so distracted by the need for money, by the need to make wars to secure the oil and the opium poppies to get more money. We lead a token existence.
Cuba, Philippines, Russia, Namibia, Antarctica, Australia, Bolivia
from http://www.mherrera.org/temp.htm
Maybe I am just interpreting that wrong? I mean, at first, I was thinking I was responding to the claim that record lows didn't happen in countries and then I see the claim appears to have shifted to record lows for within an entire country and not just locations.
I just got to leave this alone. I find forums and message boards are not functional in general.
Cuba, Philippines, Russia, Namibia, Antarctica, Australia, Bolivia
from http://www.mherrera.org/temp.htm"
You've virtually answered your own question there ! Those few countries had record lows in one, two or three locations (depending on which country you look at), to give a total of 13 minimum records - none of them all-time records.
The rest of the list shown ('Records registered during 2010') are for maximum temperatures (I haven't counted them all but there has to be about 350 of them), and include (unlike the minimums) all-time records.
Surely the difference is obvious ?
Perhaps nothing is wrong with the data, but something is wrong with the approach you've taken. Refer to the key line at the top of this posting: A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.
In that other thread my messages never post to be deleted. You can see that has led others to cross post here too. If that is not being banned from that thread then I have to seriously consider that this whole endeavor is dysfunctional, it is not working as the moderator suggests.
Who said anything about climate responding linearly? There are multiple inputs (solar variation, GHGs, aerosols, etc) and a complicated output. Hot years, cold years, differential heating from one part of the globe to another:
Any understanding of that system requires two things:
1 - we must look at the long term trends, not the daily (or even annual) variation and
2 - we must base our understanding on the work of the scientists who are the experts in these things, not on the vaporings of those who cherry-pick data or see everything through their pre-conceived notions.
Thank you for the reasonable comment moderator. I will attempt to post to that other thread again the egregious false claim made in the paper posted on down-playing noctilucents again.
Do you indeed ? Care to name a few of those times ?
Tom Loeber wrote : "I think more important than depending on hear-say and the like, attempt to get a grasp of the data yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Quite right, partly, I think. Don't rely on hear-say, definitely (and that includes media reports, etc.) - rather, rely on the experts, the expert studies and the science. Draw your own conclusions if you wish (and there are many so-called skeptics on here who certainly do !), but don't think that your conclusions are as valid as anyone elses, especially if your conclusions go against the conclusions of the science.
Many of the examples in your links are of people demonstrating inability to think laterally.
Whilst most people like to think that they are lateral thinkers, unfortunately the education process most people pass through tends to reinforce the logical thinking processes, some institutions I have observed even actually discourage lateral thinking.
At lot depends on the staff at the institution, there are only so many "inspirational" educators around, many are the tried and proven "sloggers" that follow the logical processes that teaching by the book demands.
The climate change debate is an excellent example where the reliance on peer reviewed papers and the necessity for all processes to be reduced to an equation to explain the physics involved leaves little room for lateral thinkers, especially amongst those who are students of the subject.
How do you trust even your own conclusions ?
I was wondering why Tom trusts the advice of David H. Freeman. How do we know that Mr. Freeman is not one of "the experts that keep failing us ?"
Then my head started to hurt...
Nice. You went from worrying about daily lows at LAX to glacial cycles, which have nothing to do with the current situation. Isn't that called obfuscation, a tried and true denier tactic?
"at times experts have been quite mistaken in a major way"
Sure. But do you drive over bridges? They fall. Fly in airplanes? They crash. The work of experts is all around us; we can't live buried in the suspicion that they are all in cahoots and out to get us.
I spend far too much time reading papers and looking at publicly available data; I am glad to read an expert analysis to help me digest it all. The point is, I am willing to incorporate into my evaluation the analysis of someone who knows more than I do.
"Always realize we can only hold onto an opinion." Well, as the saying goes, you're entitled to your opinion. But you aren't entitled to your own facts.
Take this to heart: the only reason you have comments deleted is because you don't adhere to the comments policy.
Period.
Don't ascribe to malice on others what is more appropriately due to non-compliance on your part.
You control your posts being moderated. No one else.
If you don't want to abide by the same rules that everyone else does, then perhaps (in the final evaluation) you are banning yourself.
The Yooper
You were asked repeatedly to move the discussion yourself; the deletion of off-topic posts (off topic in the ice age thread) has been a standard of this site since it began. It's worth reviewing the Comments Policy.
That wasn't a cross post at all - it was a redirection to the appropriate thread. If we don't try to keep on focus in our discussions, it makes it impossible for anyone else to (a) see relevant postings and to (b) contribute to an ongoing exchange. If we toss useful information onto a thread where nobody will ever think to look for it, we're wasting our time!
As individual weather events are not climate (as was covered by several people responding to you), this thread on "Does cold weather disprove global warming" is entirely appropriate for that discussion.
Your response to the question of evidence for "wide spread record cold" did not demonstrate what you wished - I'm just left wondering why that wasn't apparent from the multiple posts responding or the numerous moderator remarks directed to you.
If you didn't note my response on extrema or the redirect, I can only presume you weren't reading the posts in the thread or the moderator notes to you.
This selective recall of yours does not help.
I mean, give me a break, you are inferring I'm quite the total idiot and it might just be fine and dandy with the mods for ad hominem to predominate against a person who does not kiss ass. I am very much into being open and honest and many do not have a world model that incorporates the utility of that.
As far as I can tell this message board is dysfunctional, the mods are exhibiting dysfunctional behavior and many of the participants keep on arguing apples to oranges to suggest the place caters to the dysfunctional. Well, as a Homo sap on planet earth the lack of wherewithal of my fellow human beings is my failing too so I too am dysfunctional as I do not exist in a vacuum. I have even been know to make mistakes and I have tried to correct them here and in the other thread. The "lets all gang up on the one who seeks to be logical" scenario I seem to be witnessing here is, again, a consequence of this idea that majority opinion determines truth. If anyone is truly interested in pursuing a better understanding of what is going on and what we should be trying to prepare for and avoid, those who disagree with the adopted stance, as long as they are not totally wacko, should be given lots of room, see past my frailties as a human being and see that quite possibly, the long term predictions for extreme cold and harsh winters ahead are not just a bunch of baloney. Maybe some of those are based on sound information that we shouldn't just ignore due to their not fitting in with the theory that lets the fossil fuel profiting companies off the hook. Did you see that Project Censored item that the US pentagon is the top polluter on the planet?
The description of what the "Policy" is here seems to be a list of what the mods think is okay for them to do and for anyone else who plays into supporting their perspective. Like many laws they are used against those who attempt to speak truth to power while letting the powerful get away with breaking them continuously and often. So it goes.
Widespread cold records during the (tied) hottest year, globally on record is consistent with the ideas presented in the Nature paper Early-warning signals for critical transitions. Technically we would describe this as a signal showing increased variance of a complex system.
I take my shoes off if those are the rules when I visit some people. If I don't like what's been served for the meal I simply shift the unpalatable to the side of the plate - I don't tell the cook he's incompetent. I don't tell the other guests their enjoyment is all wrong. I use the bathroom in the hall, I don't wander through the host's bedroom to use their ensuite unless I'm invited to do so.
The fact that a site like this is an 'open house' invitation doesn't alter the fact that there are always some rules about acceptable behaviour.
No. 0.17% (1,285,216 / 510,072,000 * 2/3) of the globe does not refute the other 99.83%.
I'm simply at a loss for words (and that almost never happens)...
Twice now (here and here) I've offered up advice on how to be a positive contributor here so that we all can benefit from the knowledge you bring to this table. Other than that, I've tried to stay out of the discussion, to see the merits of your position from your point of view, free from being a direct part of the action.
But time and again, you veer off into dissembling, blaming and impugning the integrity of the moderators here. Tell me, do you work at being difficult or does it just come naturally? Because, honestly, I can't tell the difference.
Many of us are intimately aware of dysfunctionality. Either we've grown up with it, lived it or witnessed it close at hand. I'm certainly not perfect and I really try to make allowances for the imperfections of others. But frankly, I resent your implication that by being a commenter and frequenter of this place that I'm a party to this quasi-conspiracy against you.
Grow up. Become a resource for us here.
Or just ramble on.
The Yooper
In regards to localized cold events, the data for the world shows 2010 tied for the hottest year on record. There will always be record highs and record lows occurring - that's the nature of variability. But the data indicates there are far more highs than lows (see this link, which I pointed you to before), showing that the mid-point, the climate, is moving up.
Climate reversals: Perhaps there is some chance of a Younger Dryas type event, although that appears to have been a Northern Hemisphere occurrence, not a global one (perhaps a shutdown of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation?). But given that we don't know exactly why such events occurred, we don't have any evidence to suspect a climate reversal.
What we do have is significant evidence and known risk factors for amplification of warming - methane release from permafrost and sea-floor clathrate accumulations, for example. Those would have global effects, not regional. Given what we know, those are significant risks down the line, not reversals.
Once again, you are caught up in the type of argument/belief where you see only part of the answer (the answer you WANT to see) and ignore everything else.
With regard to Peru, you also have to bear in mind that it wasn't simply the cold weather that led to the state of emergency - it was also due to the effects of that cold on a poverty-stricken people who had previously suffered from everything from extreme downpours to extreme drought. The deaths were largely respiratory infections in children, sadly, but such deaths (and, therefore, such a state of emergency) would not have been so widespread in a wealthier country with a more effective health system.
Tragic and extreme but not as doom-laden or prophetic as you seem to think - at least, not unless it becomes a regular occurrence in future.
You obviously need to become more aware of something you yourself stated previously :
"I think more important than depending on hear-say and the like,..."
...and become less keen to be led along too quickly by the rest of that sentence of yours :
"...attempt to get a grasp of the data yourself and draw your own conclusions."
Drawing your own conclusions has led you to your 'coming ice-age' belief. Why not step back, look at all the evidence (and in more detail at the stories you are using to 'back-up' your assertions), and see what the reality is as it stands at the moment - cold weather, even very cold weather, is still possible (perhaps more likely in certain areas) in a warming world which isn't heading towards an ice-age.
Oh, and you would look more credible if you were to post less of your conspiracy-theory/censorship thoughts.
I do want to step back and issue a general, heart-felt compliment to you, Tom. Your ideas about noctilucent clouds, tipping points and sudden ice ages is certainly one of the most unique and interesting ideas I've heard in a while.
You should really try to present it in a more formal fashion here, with cited sources, etc. I think you'd find a much better, dialogue-based, discussion of what you bring to this table. I would look forward to reading such a presentation.
The Yooper
As this article explains, cold weather doesn't disprove global warming - but hey, I'm sure you can continue flooding this site with your worthless anecdotal evidence!
I see oscillations, winter to summer. I see extremes in both. I see it as a ship rocking on an ocean whose currents are being subjected to new factors, unprecedented factors the consequences of growing powerful thinking life within a finite space. Whether or not thinking life embraces free exchange of information to express intelligence may be a question as to whether or not that listing ship collapses out of what we can endure, Intelligence, fat chance, what with these linear presentations in control of folks with no or little testing of their responsibility and tolerance, seeing the little pieces that challenge status quo are given little space and much denigration, IMHO