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Some Crazy Weather, Australian Style — A Trend, or Just Unusual Weather?

March 23, 2010

Weather is not climate. One region is not global climate. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that Australia’s bizarrely hot weather last summer – so hot that Koala’s were abandoning their normally shy habits and bonding closely with humans in return for some much needed water and cooling off — was followed by yet another scorcher this summer.

It turns out, at least in much of Australia, that 2010 was another hot, dry summer. And Western Australia had its hottest summer on record.

It also had one of its driest, as much of Australia remain in a severe 10 year plus drought that has led to rampant wildfires, and reportedly left some of the country’s major rivers close to high and dry.

This has been particularly true in the South, where in the Southeastern Murray – Darling river basin, an estimated10,000 farming families were climatically pushed off their land from’04 through ‘08.  [The drought, which really got going  in 2002 with the "worst drought on record," became so tenacious that in 2007, the state of Queensland planned to introduce recycled sewage for drinking water beginning the following year. At the beginning of 2009, before another dry year was added on top -- the volume of water flowing into the Murray, Australia's main river and once called the "Mighty Murray," was the lowest on record.]

It was so dry these past few months in the Western Australia town of Perth, which had just experienced its driest summer in 113 years, that when one of the freakiest (and costliest) storms in decades hit, at least there was a bona fide silver lining for many — finally, some rain:  Yesterday, the town of Perth was hit with a storm that brought almost a month’s worth of average rainfall in just seven minutes.

The storm also brought hailstones the size of golf balls, landslides, flooding, reported winds of over 70 m.p.h., and likely over $100 million in damage — including the partial collapse of the terminal roof at Perth International Airport where the the rainfall was measured.

What does this mean? When one peruses the climate news for the Australian summer of 2010 — using the search words “Australia, summer, 2010, and “climate change,” near the top is of course a post on the wildly popular disinformation climate site “Watts Up With That?” making a big deal out of the fact that it snowed for the first time in some areas of Australia this past summer; while of course entirely leaving out the more important “also” part of the equation.

Since it was also one of the hottest, and driest, summers on record at the same time the summer’s first snowfalls were also at the same time recorded, this minimal bit of information would seem to be more — albeit slight — empirical support for the inference that the area is getting warmer, and the weather more volatile at the same time.

The idea that weather does not define climate was examined here.  But A. Watts’ “Watts Up With That?” webblog elected to simply re post verbatim excerpts — note that the site often simply reposts large chunks or an entire article verbatim without much or any additional commentary, insight or analysis — from an original snowfall article,with the simple, snarky introduction:

More from the “weather is not climate department.”

Read through the 154 comments to the snowfall article to see if this kind of subtle (and very often not so subtle) ‘arguing’ doesn’t have a profound effect on shaping and misinforming the discussion. Unfortunately, as a perusal of the comments on the site at any point in time aptly illustrate, it does.  (Here’s an interesting related video, which Watts improperly had YouTube take down, and which was then put back up: see from minutes 3:56 on — as the earlier part is peripheral, and it is true, someone does have to defend smokers.)

Not only can a single weather event not necessarily be tied to so called “climate change” – it is rather scientifically silly to do so.  Climate is what it is, over time. Many of our actions invariably effect it. (Normally, minimally, and have been ever since we started building fires many millennia ago, however minutely).  Physics and biology says that when we increase long lived heat trapping atmospheric gases to levels not seen in perhaps millions of years, that the climate will eventually change — if not on a predictable time scale or one that we may want to neatly and clearly “tell us” exactly what is going on.

The question, and it is a complex one — is exactly what type of change, and whether or not that change will involve an increasing number of what we would consider radical, wild, extreme, and even heavily destructive weather events and patterns.

Climate scientists have long predicted that with an ongoing increase in atmospheric heat trapping gases, that this likelihood existed.

Are we seeing it?

One interesting storm in Perth, Australia alone –even following two successive summers of record breaking, and near record breaking, heat and dryness — tells us little to nothing.  But one of the things we will be doing on this blog in the coming months is looking more closely at weather patterns, both over much longer periods of  time, and across the globe, to see if we can get a feel for whether — whatever the cause — weather is in fact changing and becoming more volatile as the casual observations by any keen outdoor observer seem to highly suggest.

New Report Concludes Changing Climate Altering Patterns of Migratory Birds

March 13, 2010

The report, a follow-up to a comprehensive report from a year ago showing that almost one-third of the nation’s birds are either threatened or in “significant decline,” was issued by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday.

From the press release:

“For well over a century, migratory birds have faced stresses such as commercial hunting, loss of forests,  the use of DDT and other pesticides, a loss of wetlands and other key habitat, the introduction of invasive species, and other impacts of human development,” Salazar said. “Now they are facing a new threat–climate change–that could dramatically alter their habitat and food supply and push many species towards extinction.”

The study — take it for what you will — the release notes, was a collaborative effort of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and several leading conservation organizations.

The idea of an apparently changing climate’s effect is not necessarily “news” to anyone who pays close attention to goings on outside in the natural world.  For years, the patterns of migratory birds, for example, have seemed to be shifting. And many birds in the northern hemisphere, for example, have also apparently been making their winter sojourn south at later and later times. The question is whether or not the changes have come too fast for species to fully adapt. Or, perhaps more critically, whether they might be starting to come, or in the near future, might, in such a rapid manner as to increase the rate on non adaptive responses.

Salazar seems to at least be hinting at this possibility, suggesting, whether rightly or wrongly, that birds might once again, so to speak, be a sort of “canary in a coal mine:”

“Just as they did in 1962 when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, our migratory birds are sending us a message about the health of our planet,” Salazar said. “That is why–for the first time ever–the Department of the Interior has deployed a coordinated strategy to plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change on the resources we manage.”

The report covers some of the ways in which a rapidly changing climate can negatively effect already threatened bird populations. Among them, as written in the text of the report:

• Altering habitats, allowing for the increase of invasive species. As invasive species expand, they can outcompete native species, leading to the reduction or loss of native plants and wildlife.
• Spreading disease. Distribution of disease patterns and changes in wildlife occurrence will affect the transmission of diseases. It is also expected that infectious diseases will emerge more frequently and in new areas due to climate change.
• Exacerbating the impacts of storm-surge flooding and shoreline erosion. Increasingly developed coastal communities and rising sea level will limit potential habitat for coastal birds.
• Changing the distribution and availability of surface and ground water. Climate change will constrain water resources, further increasing competition among agricultural, municipal, industrial, and wildlife uses.

Time will tell. At least, according to some scientists, however, it is already.

Climate Change Effect Increasingly Visible and Measurable, Broad Studies Review Concludes

March 08, 2010

New research by Britain’s Met Office reviewed more than 100 recent studies on Climate Change.  The review concludes that is is an “increasingly remote possibility” that human activity is not the main cause of observed climate change.

This is not exactly new news. But it does offer additional recent independent studies consistent with the overwhelming already existent scientific consensus (not to be confused with the very different, and non existent “public consensus” on the issue).

Many skeptics, often without support, assert that any changes we have observed are simply due to “natural cycles” or variation. Even more egregiously, it is often asserted that the bulk, if not all, of observed changes, are due to specific factors, such as volcanic eruption; or, worse, increased solar radiation.

As Peter Stock of the Met Office, who led the review, puts it:

There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years and solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen.

Judith Lean led a seminal study in 1998 “Reconstruction of solar irradiance since 1610: Implications for climate change,” that concluded that less than a third of the observed warming since 1970 could be attributed to solar forcing.

Since that time, solar forcing has only decreased. As NASA points out, the earth has actually been in a solar minimum recently (which, all else being equal, would tend to have a slight cooling effect).   And the longer term trend since 1978 has been for a slight cooling effect from solar activity.

Moreover, a new study last month, published in GeoPhysical Research Letters, suggests that even if predictions for an extended period of solar minimum turn out to be correct, it would have only a minimal impact upon climate in comparison to the current anthropogenic atmospheric forcing,so there’s no potential temporary respite from “sun assistance.”

And, as NASA also points out, 2000-2009 was still the warmest decade ever recorded, with 2009 being tied for the second warmest year ever recorded.

However, it should be pointed out that whether it one year or another was the warmest, of seventh warmest, is fairly insignificant.  (This has not stopped disinformants like the Washington Post’s George Will from claiming otherwise.)  What is important to note however, is the longer term trend. As NASA/GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt notes: “The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years.”

It is worth noting however, that as solar activity alone would have if anything causes a slight decrease in temperatures over the last three of so decades, temperatures increased, with each suceeeding decade (1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2000,) warmer than the one before it.  Yet so called climate change “skeptics” (exhibiting a position which if anything appears skeptical that the basic long term rules of physics apply to atmospheric increases in heat trapping gases when we are the cause) repeatedly assert that observed climate change is due to changes in solar radiation.

The only thing supported by the recent evidence, would be the precise opposite.

South of Australia Got So Hot in Summer 2009, Koalas were Asking People for Water

March 5, 2010

First, the scientific analysis:  This nicely laid out NASA surface map compares the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1, 2009  to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008, and shows bizarre land surface temperature anomalies for the last week of January, 2009, or “mid summer.”

In response, Koalas, which are normally shy animals, open it all up for a little agua during the heat wave; or, with soundtrack:

As NASA notes:

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.

Nighttime temperatures broke records, too. In their special statement on the heat wave, the BOM wrote, “On the morning of 29 January, an exceptional event also occurred in the northern suburbs of Adelaide around 3 a.m., when strong north-westerly winds mixed hot air aloft to the surface. At RAAF Edinburgh [a regional airport], the temperature rose to 41.7°C at 3:04 a.m. Such an event appears to be without known precedent in southern Australia.”

A Reuters article around this time, perhaps questionably, called this a “sign” of climate change.  Yet on its own the heat wave means very little. But as is pointed out more relevantly in the article itself, quoting from Penny Wong, Australia’s Climate Change Minister, it is very consistent with climate change:

“Eleven of the hottest years in history have been in the last 12, and we also note, particularly in the southern part of Australia, we’re seeing less rainfall,” Wong told reporters.

“All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”

But then, an unusually cold summer would not be inconsistent– which is the part that leaves so many people baffled: Climate change is about long term effects; short term weather patterns are only relevant in so far as they add to the pattern of longer term alteration — with, obviously, the more bizarre effects having slightly greater, but still often slight, relevance to the broader issue.

As Wong notes — with a few minute corrections here (in italics) — is that what is of greater relevance is the fact that the eleven hottest years in modern history have all been in the last thirteen years.

But even longer term periods of seemingly disparate trends have to be looked at without jumping to too many conclusions, as we still don’t understand fully how and why climate precisely shifts in the way that it sometimes does, and would not expect increasing changes to our climate change system to alter inherent natural variability and even shorter term unpredictability. In fact, many climate scientists have suggested for years that both variability, and in particular, unpredictability, may increase.

It is interesting to note that almost a year later, in Melbourne, nighttime temperatures recently reached their record high, set a little over a 100 years past, as Australia seems once again to be observing higher than usual summer range heat. Yet also this summer in Australia, some towns in the Southeastern region saw their first ever recorded summer snowfalls.

As the longer term temperature trends are rising, unambiguously, such events are either meaningless variation, evidence of increasing variation, or part of an increasing array of signs that climate is changing.  Or all three.

At the same time as parts of Australia saw unprecedented snowfall in what is Australia’s summer, globally, the world just experienced its fourth warmest January in modern history, the same month it snowed in Southeastern Australia. (As of this posting, comprehensive monthly temperature records for February are not yet available.)  This followed the eighth warmest December on record, and the fourth warmest November.

Yet continuing the apparent shorter term pattern of increasingly disparate, and seemingly wackier weather — whether, again, by chance, increasing variability, or increasing signs of actual changing climate patterns — the U.S. this very same winter saw  unprecedented huge snowfall combinations in the mid Eastern Atlantic region, record setting, if not bizarre snow, in the Dallas area, while forecasters recently predicted the first snow accumulation in Western Florida since 1933.

Snow does not mean climate is not changing. Seemingly heavier snowfalls along with a continuing warming trend, in fact, is more consistent with the idea that climate is changing, than not.

Increasingly Rapid Greenland Ice Melting May be Connected to Warming Fjords

February 21, 2010

In the last several years, one of the key things learned is that our previous assumptions about the time it would take to melt enormous sheets of ice — say, for example, Greenland, or the rest of the Arctic — was wildly underestimated.

One of the key components of increased melting is the presence of water, particularly in cracks in the ice.

There are multiple reasons for this. Cracks in the ice allow for warmer temperatures to reach down into the ice, into areas that otherwise would be well blocked and insulated from warmer temperatures.  Then the melting is further accelerated because ice melts much faster in water than in air. Increased pressure from water build up (from, for example, small lakes forming atop of ice sheets, with water permeating deeply through cracks underneath) also accelerates the process.

In Greenland, a team of scientists, led by Fiammetta Straneo of the Woods Hole Institute, are also looking at the role that continually replenishing warmer water may be playing in the melting of glaciers at the ocean ice interface. From the journal Nature Geoscience:

Here we present oceanographic data collected in Sermilik Fjord, East Greenland, by ship in summer 2008 and from moorings. Our data reveal the presence of subtropical waters throughout the fjord. These waters are continuously replenished through a wind-driven exchange with the shelf, where they are present all year. The temperature and renewal of these waters indicate that they currently cause enhanced submarine melting at the glacier terminus.

This has been offered as one possible explanation for the increasingly rapid melting of the outer ice shelf areas.   It would also seem to be dependent up ocean currents that bring warmer waters up from the south to the shelf of Greenland.  Ocean patterns are changing, and while many effects of increased atmospheric forcing are starting to accelerate, it is conceivable, it seems, that this process could slow if the ocean currents that bring up warmer tropic waters, were to shut off.

A Fjord is a cut area left by a glacier via abrasion, forming a valley that fills with water.  A big part of the rapidly accelerating warming, the scientists theorize, is also due to shifting wind patters that is bringing in (relatively) warmer water (perhaps 38 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.)  The original source of the water is of course warmth brought up from further south as part of the ocean’s circulatory patterns.

What the scientists theorize is that some of the increased melting is due to a combination of ocean and atmospheric changes; increasing shore-ward winds drive the warmer waters off the continental shelf into the Fjords, where the waters then lead to increased melting (which would cool those waters) with the water being constantly replenished by waters from the warmer continental shelf.

It is just a theory. But the Woods Hole team, as noted above, was able to at least test the theory and confirm the continued replenishment of continental shelf (warmer) water in the fjords at the ocean/ice terminus.

Carbon Dioxide Might be At Highest Sustained Levels in Fifteen Million Years

February 20, 2010

According to a UCLA press release issued October 8, 2009, a study in the October 8, 2009 edition of Science suggests that the last time that CO2 levels were as high as today — and were at those levels over sustained periods of time — the earth was 5 to 10 degrees warmer Fahrenheit, there was no permanent ice at the Arctic, less ice in the Antarctic, and sea levels were around 75 to 120 feet higher than today,

The authors of the report — let by assistant professor Aradhna Tripati of UCLA’s department of Earth and space sciences and department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, in conjunction with professors from Cambridge and Cal Tech — seem to be speculating/assessing based upon best available information and methodology.  Of significance, they have also been able to verify their methodology as empirically sound at least in so far as being able to measure it against otherwise known data.

“We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02 based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,” Tripati said. “This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.

“We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago,” she said.

Tripati also claims that the findings are more fact than speculation, with a low margin of error, and also notes:

“A slightly shocking finding,” Tripati said, “is that the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different.”

According to Tripati, the Arctic ice cap formed around 14 million years ago, and has been here ever since. CO2 levels, which the authors found to be correlated with temperatures going back 20 million years ( just like earlier ice core studies that found a correlation between average temperature and CO2 levels going back 800,000 years), are higher than they have been going back 14 million years. And are rising, every year.

Meaning of Heavy Snows Debated in Nation’s Capitol, Worthless Posturing Continues

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.