Andre's Musings

Many people ask about our network of Web Weatherspies since I make it a habit of showing what's happening everywhere.  These are real people with real backyards, not weather at an airport (does anyone actually live there?).  Certainly we are grateful for all of the official airport reporting stations, but our FOX 8 Web Weatherspies fulfill a very important function of filling in all the gaps.

However, we can only highlight a handful every evening.... until now.

On Wednesday, August 27th, we launched our Web Weatherspy's observation blog.  Those who have been approved (most of them long time web weatherspies for me for 20 or more years) are able to make daily posts which are time stamped and archived in an easy-to-ready format.

Every day, the observations are archived, so if you ever need to "back up" to check on what the weather was like in a nearby city or town, just click on the year, month and date on the right side of the web site to open up that day's postings.

If you you like to become one of our Web Weatherspies, contact me with your name and address and we'll send you an application for consideration.

Our Weatherspies are a group of dedicated weather enthusiasts who pride themselves on meticulous and careful meteorological monitoring and the information provided is valuable.  Bravo!

Enjoy the new feature from our weather tab on our web site or if you prefer, directly.

My brother asked me about the doomsayers who say that ocean levels are rising and will continue to accelerate, wiping out more and more coastline.  This is the rhetoric that has been broadcast for more than 20 years.  So is the ocean level rising?  Has it risen in the last 20 years?  40 years?

I took my brother to a beach we went to in Fairhaven at Sconticut Neck as kids.  My aunt and uncle owned a cottage there so we spent many days cooling off in the ocean on their beach.  There was a rock we were dearly familiar with.  That rock was our water gauge.  We knew when the ocean had reached high tide and when we reached low tide.

The rock is still there.  If there was even a 3" water change, my brother and I would have noticed since we knew that markings on that rock intimately.  Over forty years have gone by since we first started swimming there every summer.  High tide still hit the exact mark on the rock compared to when we were kids.

The ocean has not risen.... any.

Additionally, there are parts of the Pacific that have actually seen a decrease in the ocean levels (click here see the documentary to which I make reference on my web site).

Today in Dhaka, Bangladesh, researchers have discovered that the ocean levels there have also dropped.  Using 32 years worth of high resolution satellite images, they found that the coast of Bangladesh has actually gained about 20 square kilometers of new coastline!

Is the ocean rising precipitously?  All of the evidence present says, "no."

If you would like to read more about this story, click here.

As I have been highlighting in the past six months, more and more meteorologists, climatologists and phyicists are becoming vocal about their disagreement with the theory of anthropic CO2 forcing.

Even goups that once nodded in agreement with the theory are now saying, "Stop the presses!"

Here's a July 16th news release from the APS (American Physical Society):

Science Group Repping 50,000 Physicists Reverses Stance, Admits 'Considerable Presence' of Skeptics

 

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
Michael Asher - July 16, 2008 9:35 PM

"Considerable presence" Of Skeptics

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.  The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.   A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method." 

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming.   "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

2008 Global Temperatures Similar to 1940

Excerpt: By Richard Courtney, DipPhil, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant.)

Courtney took up the NRDC challenge to skeptical scientists to 'let NRDC's real climate experts take them on'

Excerpt: Richard S Courtney says that the temperature is similar to 1940. […] The global temperature fell from 1940 to 1970, rose from 1970 to 1998, and fell from 1998 to the present (i.e. mid-2008). This is 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming, and global temperature is now similar to that of 1940.” [..] It is simply true. Please do not take my word for it but check it for yourself. I cite CRU data from: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/had
crut3gl.txt In that CRU data set the 1940 monthly values of temperature anomalies from the 30 year mean are presented in degrees Celsius. They range between -0.191 and +0.057 with an annual mean of +0.018. In that same data set the monthly 2008 anomalies to date are +0.053, +0.192, +0.430, +0.254 and +0.278. This is a mean value for the months in 2008 to date of +0.241. The ranges of the monthly values for these years overlap; i.e. the highest monthly value in 1940 (+0.057) was higher than the lowest monthly value in 2008 (+0.053). I think it very reasonable to say they are “similar” when their ranges overlap. However, my use of the word “similar” could be considered to an understatement because the mean values differ by only 0.223 degrees Celsius and the data has inherent error of +/- 0.2 degrees Celsius. So, within their inherent errors the mean values are not similar because THEY ARE THE SAME. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased by more than 30% since 1940 and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is supposed to induce "dangerous" global warming.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/pgutis/public_en
emies.html#comment1189

Cooling Underway: Global Temperature Continues to Drop in May 

'Significantly Colder'
16-month temperature drop of -0.774°C! 

Global temperatures continued to slide in May 2008.  Meteorologist Anthony Watts details the cooling temperatures in a report titled “Global Temperature Dives in May.” The new global temperature data reveals a whopping three quarters of a degree Celsius drop in temperatures since January 2007. Watts reported late yesterday that the cooling is “equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon ‘global warming signal’ of the last 100 years.”

 

“Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting in many parts of the northern hemisphere, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH), published their satellite-derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008,” Watts reported on June 3. 

Here's a fun project to do with your kids: send their names to the moon... LITERALLY!

NASA is accepting names that will be placed on a computer chip that will circle the moon on an upcoming probe that will orbit the moon.

After you register, you will be sent a PDF file certificate that you can print just like I did for Bill and Stacey on FOX 8 News at 5 PM.

Here's the link!

 

As I mentioned on FOX 8 News at 5 PM on Friday, there is a web site that is hosting LIVE video from a number of tornado chase teams.  Technology has allowed live video feeds by phone and we get to jump into the car of a chaser and see what he or she sees.

The URL is below.  Have fun!

http://www.severestreaming.com/

 

 

And I am one of the signators.  Many of my co-workers in meteorology here in Cleveland have also been signers.

CLICK HERE for the complete story.

 

Earlier today on FOX 8 News at 5 PM, I showed the ODNR's web cam on the top of Terminal Tower in one of my computer hyperlinks.  What did we see?

Something VERY, VERY cute.

The baby falcons perched near the top of Terminal Tower have hatched!

Here is a LIVE image of the web cam below (darker image during nighttime).
Hit the REFRESH key for a new image every minute or so.

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh...."

The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon. The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate.

The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850. There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do.

There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead. It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story
/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html

News from Marc Morano, Communications Director
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Washington D.C.

The pressure is on.

CBS News 60 Minutes is pressing Gore on skeptics. Gore knows he is facing serious backlash from the scientific community and peer-reviewed studies. 2007 and now 2008 are overwhelmingly turning into the “tipping points” for climate alarmism as new peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears, a U.S. Senate minority report reveals nearly 500 scientists dissented from man-made climate fears, and more and more scientists continue in 2008 to declare themselves skeptical of a man-made climate “crisis.”

The Earth’s failure to continue warming has also confounded promoters of man-made climate fear. Here is a mere sampling of inconvenient developments for climate alarmists in 2008 alone:

(1)
Oceans Cooling! Scientists puzzled by “mystery of global warming's missing heat”- LINK  

(2)
New Data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is showing “greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”- LINK 

(3)
Former NASA Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer found not one peer-reviewed paper has 'ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth' – LINK

(4)
UN IPCC in 'Panic Mode' as Earth Fails to Warm, Scientist says – LINK 

(5)
UN IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri “to look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.”- LINK 

(6)
New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” – LINK & LINK. 

(7)
An International team of scientists released a March 2008  report to counter UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” – LINK

(8)
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s new analysis finds the Earth has had “No statistically significant warming since 1995.”- LINK 

In light of the 2007 record breaking global temperature drop and a northern hemisphere snow and ice pack that has expanded to the second greatest extent in recorded history, every single teacher that requires his or her students to watch Mr. Gore's error filled film should also require their students to watch another importnat work.

It's a documentary produced by CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) that aired in 2007.

I encourage every single student and teacher who reads this blog to pass this along to everyone. Solid science deserves our attention and this is it.



Enjoy... and stay warm. ;)

After the global temperature dropped a full degree in 2007 (NASA 2007 Data), essentially wiping out a centrury of a slow rise in global averages, yet another climatologist reverses his position in lieu of another discovery by a fellow meteorologist!

Report: Prominent Scientist Converts To Skeptic,
Resigns From NASA in Protest

Excerpt: Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher.  He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center. After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well.  "I fell in love," he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week. "Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," Miskolczi states.  Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount. How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution. Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution -- originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today -- ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always. So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down. NASA refused to release the results.  Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple.  "Money", he tells DailyTech.  Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research.  Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year. Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate.  My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhou
se+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm>

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here.  The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+W
orldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

It's official and substantiated by NOAA and Rutgers University's Meteorology Department: January 2008 was the second snowiest month in the northern hemisphere, second only to that February we remember all to well in 1978.

The map below, from NOAA, shows the extent of the snow and ice pack last month.  Add to that some record snow and cold events in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and China (some records dating back 30-100 years).



CLICK HERE to see the complete story.