February 15, 2010
A recent NY Times article,with a very misleading headline, notes:
The family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.”
To counter this, the author, John Broder, used a quote by the widely quoted Joseph Romm, which was of some, but relatively limited, value:
“Ideologues in the Senate keep pushing the anti-scientific disinformation that big snowstorms are evidence against human-caused global warming,” Mr. Romm wrote on Wednesday.
Leaving out the subjective (but perhaps correct?) word “ideologues,” this seems true enough. But what does it really say? That this is disinformation?
A commenter on the somewhat popular Times blog, DotEarth.com, struggled to come up with an explanation as to why this was disinformation:
One of the other things climate scientists have repeatedly predicted is an increase in total precipitation, [which] has increased 5 to 10 percent over the past century, and more likely with an increase in certain geographical regions, including even possibly in the East and Northeast of this country.
One of the other, and more important predictions made is that there will likely be increased variability, unpredictability, and weather extremity.
…If it is reasonably cold, and precipitation is up in a temperate region, then that precipitation will fall as snow. As an indicia of longer term global temperature trends, temps’ down in a particular geographical region over a short period of time (a few months, while even several years in some region is irrelevant) is about as relevant to the issue of climate change — which is not monotonic — as who the Washington Redskins football team might waste their next few huge signing bonuses on.
This recent, and very short period of reasonable cold in the geographical region of D.C. happened to have followed an extremely warm, and very late lasting, autumn in the region, as well as a year, globally, that was tied for the second warmest on record, according to NASA.
Another commenter on that same blog, picked this apart:
“The recent heavy snows in D.C., which also follows several winters of almost no snow at all, is consistent with all of the predictions made,”
Yes, we have heard this story before. Whatever happens, it is consistent with AGW predictions. And nothing that can happen is inconsistent with AGW predictions. Heating, cooling, more rain, less rain, more snow, less snow. Get one year with lots of Hurricans, it’s consistent with AGW. Follow it with years of less than average hurricanes and it is consistent with AGW. Get sea level rise acceleration – consistent with AGW. Get sea level rise deceleration -as we have now – consitstent with AGW. 12 years of no warming – consistent with AGW.
That comment, which also pointed out how a British newspaper article in 2000 predicted the end of snow at some point in Britain, was far more popular. But Britain is not Washington D.C. Nor does ten years invalidate “at some future point.” Here also is the charting of sea level rise. It slopes fairly constantly upward.
The original commenter (seemingly a bit over frustrated), tried to point out these and other flaws, but it was no match for the insightful arguments that AGW can not be disproven, getting less than one-fourth the number of recommends:
As for Britain (also in response to comment 58), if the main ocean conveyor belts that bring warmer water up north don’t shut off, which would likely cause the UK to become much colder, then the general trend of warming, which is what is expected, would likely end snow for the most part (which is already minimal to begin with) in Britain over time.
(See, but there’s that variability that you have trouble with. You want us to conduct a huge global experiment with no sister earth as a control, over a century plus, and tell you in advance exactly what will happen.)
What part of slowly increased warming in an already very consistently temperate region leading to likely no snow in future (forget about it being some random article in 2000 that you probably searched far and wide for, somehow thinking it contradicted the idea of snow still in the United States, or anywhere, a mere 10 years later) is it that you didn’t follow?
Does Romm explain it any better than the above commenter, or than the quote provided courtesy of the New York Times John Broder? Somewhat, relying upon MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan in video. But he also makes the very good point that it is more accurate to say that these more extreme patterns are “consistent with” rather than necessarily “evidence of” climate change. And he provides a chilling glimpse at just how anti-science some ostensible news websites are. Quoting from the ideological Newsbusters.org:
With Washington, D.C. buried beneath at least 20 inches of snow, and with more in the forecast, common sense would suggest global warming alarmists look elsewhere to make the argument to raise awareness for their concerns.
But no, Dylan Ratigan thinks it’s ridiculous to suggest all the snowfall totals could cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
It’s hard in a single sound bite to do justice to just how scientifically (and, ultimately, logically) backward such an assertion is. But clearly, from the popularity of anti climate change sentiments, such misleading and highly uninformed scientific commentaries do have considerable impact upon our debate and discussion.
What is also interesting, when considering DC’s unusual snowfalls, is to consider the simultaneous plight (and short term patterns) of another geographic region right now that perhaps might more readily welcome snowfalls — if they were getting them.
Perhaps overstating the significance of a particular region, Romm in another post does also aptly, if implicitly, note that if we are going to focus on DC’s unusual weather as an indicia of some type of change, or lack thereof, perhaps we can also focus on an area that routinely does get a lot of snow, and where they might like some right now. Namely, where the current Olympics are being held; Vancouver, Canada. Take note of Vancouver’s unusual current pattern, which one does not hear much about on Newsbusters:
This year, the average temperature in January was 44.9 degrees, besting the previous warm record of 43.3 in 2006 and well above the historic average of 37.9 degrees, according to Environment Canada weather data.
That’s a pretty big jump, to say the least. But what also seems to be missed in all of this “Al Gore’s igloo” type debate, is the fact that snow is not really relevant to temperature data. Snow is relevant to precipitation data, which then in turn will be generally correlated with whether it is above or below (or sometimes near) freezing temperatures. (That is, near or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Temperatures around freezing in a region which does include seasonal winters, is not odd. The only unusual thing here, though it is statistically of less value (like Vancouver it is one geographic region, and over a long term trend far less meaningful), is that there has been an unusually large amount of snow, or precipitation. (On this point, the next day, Romm called out this same NY Times article for what it terms the misleading “Deep Freeze” headline. And he is correct. DC is not in any sort of ‘deep freeze’ as the headline represents. )
But again, increased snow, which is short term precipitation data, is being confused with short term temperature data.
And increased precipitation, even if shorter term trends were not essentially meaningless, doesn’t really have anything to do with general climate change concerns, other than being somewhat consistent with the bulk of the predictions of expected increased precipitation in some areas, including the Atlantic Northeast. Increasingly odder seeming weather doesn’t either, other than being more consistent with the expectation of increasingly variable and unpredictable weather.
In other words, the DC snow thing, while it can be seen, touched, and felt right outside their windows by those legislators and others in DC, is being turned into something it is not.
Does Broder ever get to this point in his article?
Eventually. Near the bottom of the piece, it finally does get around to making the point that the snowfall is in fact directly in line with generally predicted (if uncertain) longer term precipitation increases for the broader region. Citing the Climate Impacts report, a report that one of the quoted blog commenters above linked to for the same general idea, Broder notes:
A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns.
Wishful thinking on the science of climate change, of course, as the above comments illutrate, was able to spin this around into something which nevertheless undermined climate science.
By this standard, we will know nothing of actual climate change until such time as we see said climate change. At which point it will still be somewhat insignificant, depending on scope of change, because short term trends do not longer term patterns make. Thus, in effect, what is happening is that by this common standard, we will know nothing of actual climate change until such time as we see, for some combination of increasingly severe, and/or long patterns, said climate change.
Which will of course succeed the actual cause of such change, and, do so, by several decades if not more. Thus making it very difficult to arrest (let alone prevent) what has already been done; and done well in the past, at that.
Hence the problem with confusing certainty on the issue, with the actual state of knowledge that does exist. Funny as James Inhofe’s Al Gore igloo must have been.
Climate Change, Glaciers, Ocean Patterns | admin February 21, 2010 | 
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