curryja | August 14, 2023 at 8:15 pm | Reply
Well this post should keep you busy and entertained for awhile! Crazy busy with hurricane season and interviews. Will post new material when i can.
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Beta Blocker | August 14, 2023 at 11:07 pm | Reply
FYI, the climate activists won their case against the State of Montana this afternoon. The judge accepted their arguments verbatim.
This is no surprise because the state’s lawyers didn’t offer anything resembling an organized body of counter-argument to what the plaintiffs were claiming.
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joe - the non climate scientiest | August 15, 2023 at 7:30 am |
beta – I have scanned through the findings of facts in the opinion, and yes the judge took the plaintiffs testimony at full face value.
As I noted yesterday several observations on the findings of fact
1) lots of findings of facts are either grossly misleading, distorted, lacking context or flat our wrong.
2) Another “expert witness” testified was credited with winning the nobel prize (nobel peace prize) as one of the coauthors of the IPCC. Just like Mann
3) another bucket of the harms are either highly speculative, wrong, or simply PRE traumatic stressIn regard to your comment on the poor job offering counter balancing testimony, my speculation is putting on counter balancing expert testimony would have been pointless since the judge had already decided the direction of the science. ie even if every point made by plaintiffs experts was fully discredited in cross or by defense experts, the judge would still have had the same findings of fact.
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JK | August 15, 2023 at 7:36 am |
That was an embarrassing ruling. “The global share of CO2 emissions produced by the state of Montana is equivalent to 0.00084% of the global CO2 emissions. If this share has stayed constant then Montana is presumably responsible for 0.000009°C of the 1.1°C of warming since 1880. At this scale, the ‘climate impacts’ supposedly caused by the emissions of the state of Montana are below detection limits.”
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joe - the non lawyer - non climate scientist | August 15, 2023 at 8:41 am |
jk & Beta – terrible ruling on the merits, Lots to criticize on the defense efforts. Though in fairness to the defense, the judges final opinion was pre-ordained based on the judges rulings on the various motions at least obvious to me that the judge was going to rule in the plaintiffs favor from the start. The judge was going to and did accept the plaintiffs testimony at full face value.
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Beta Blocker | August 15, 2023 at 10:42 am |
Joe, even if the verdict was pre-ordained, the larger public interest would have been better served if the state’s lawyers had presented a fully detailed set of scientific and evidentiary counter-arguments to each and every one of the plaintiff’s claims.
Those counter-arguments would then have been on the public record for future use by anyone who has to deal with the regulatory decision-making fallout which is certain to flow from this decision.
Having spent a short time doing environmental regulation compliance work in Montana in the mid-1970’s, I can tell you that climate activists will waste no time in placing exceptional pressure on the state’s regulatory agencies to deny the environmental permits needed by Montana’s coal mines and coal-fired power plants to keep operating.
IMHO, the ruling will not be overturned. Montana’s amended constitution from 1972 is a Pandora’s Box of environmental litigation mischief. But it says what it says. My personal opinion is that regulatory agencies in Montana will now have no other choice but to deny the necessary environmental permits the next time these come up for renewal.
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Jonathan | August 14, 2023 at 11:08 pm | Reply
Hey Dr. Curry,
I recently saw your interview with BizNewsTv. I am an engineering student discouraged by the news surrounding climate change so I wanted to ask a follow-up question to your contention about the climate change agenda. You argue that the consensus around the human caused climate emergency is largely fabricated/homogenized by political interest groups. From my (albeit limited due to age) understanding of politics, the government (and all institutions) is rarely quick to move in new directions when the status quo is benefitting them (i.e. fossil fuel companies/lobbyists and their gov’t expenditures). What organization or political arm could have been so empowered as to cause the government to raise a panic when both parties receive so much from the currently enriched energy companies?
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Wagathon | August 14, 2023 at 11:59 pm |
Knowing as much as we now do about corruption of the data resulting from UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects, using General Circulation Models (GCMs) fabricated by corrupt government-funded scientists to justify tax hikes on basic factors of production based on ignorant and superstitious fears of scientific illiterates who have been schooled to believe that runaway global warming is causing deep, disastrous climate change catastrophe is Climatology’s version of the built-in fundamental flaws of the Hubble Space Telescope’s bad mirror. GCMs are Climatology’s $10,000 toilet seats. Climatology has been likened by non-Western academics to the ancient science of astrology. The EPA has become the IRS and EPA regulations have become a payroll tax. The Left’s vision of liberal Utopia turned its back on natural light to interpret flickering shadows on the wall of Plato’s prison cave. A secular, socialist government that’s too big to fail has become a sledgehammer in the hands of a heart surgeon. Ethics and honor in science traded ivory halls for dirt floors.
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bernie1815 | August 15, 2023 at 7:43 am |
Jonathan: Good question. I am no climate scientist but I am much older than you and I remember back to the 1970s when all this got started. Britain had just suffered through a period of economy destroying strikes led by Scargill and the coal miners. The net result was that while Britain was benefiting from the North Sea Oil and Gas boom, we were still heavily dependent upon coal for power generation. I was there when we had a winters of rolling blackouts and massively disrupted train schedules. The Government appears to have initial empowered the anti-fossil fuel movement as a means of curtailing the power of the coal unions (and legitimating the closing of many marginally economic British coal mines). It appears to have back-fired.
Obviously this is not the only factor in the emergence of the anti-fossil fuel forces (and it says little about the actual nature and scope of the actual changes to global climate), but it illustrates the role of political forces in driving energy-related policies and they go far beyond the profits of the old fossil fuel “bad guys”. If self-interest motivates one side of a political argument, it can also motivate the other side, behind the veil of the public good and noble causes.Loading...
curryja | August 15, 2023 at 10:36 am |
Hello Jonathan, check out my new book Climate Uncertainty and Risk, which explains all this.
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Andrew Roman | August 14, 2023 at 11:21 pm | Reply
What is the message in this for Antonio Guterres? Are we really going to boil?
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Wagathon | August 14, 2023 at 11:47 pm | Reply
Caused by climate change? I read that in, ‘the Lahaina area they have been given the name of “lehua winds”‘… can reach 80 to 100 mph about every 8 to 12 years. Winds coming off volcanoes can cause tornadoes. Apparently, the fire in Maui was something waiting to happen since sugar cane production stopped over the years and completely in 2016 with natural grasses having completely taken over… that with the wind had the fire traveling a mile a minute…
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Renee | August 15, 2023 at 1:03 am | Reply
I have a question about the eye-popping ERA5 global temperature anomaly in the Antarctic area in figure 4. It’s interesting that this strong anomaly parallels the near coastal area of Antarctica. How accurate are ERA5 SST data in near coastal areas as well as the merge and interpolation with land based stations?
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Javier | August 15, 2023 at 5:18 am | Reply
Thanks for a great article, Judy. It’s the best I’ve read about the anomalous warming this year.
I have very little to add. From a thermodynamic point of view, the energy has to come from somewhere. The source is almost certainly due to a reduction in albedo that decreases outgoing shortwave radiation, partially offset by an increase in outgoing longwave radiation. This decrease in albedo is almost certainly caused by a decrease in cloud cover, which also points to lower wind speed and less evaporation as the ultimate cause.
“The anomalous global ocean patterns of SST are dominated by surface wind anomalies (driven by atmospheric circulation patterns) that influence the amount of surface cooling from evaporation and sensible heat flux.”
This is very important. Many people believe that climate change is dominated by ocean currents, such as the AMOC, and their trends. Climate change is imposed on the ocean by the atmosphere. The atmosphere determines how much heat is removed from the ocean and where. The ocean simply provides thermal inertia to the climate. In general, changes in SLP precede changes in SST by one to three months.
Changes in the NH indicate a weakening of the wind circulation, as you say. The SST pattern and the lack of anomaly (positive or negative) in Arctic sea ice over the last 10 years suggests that the meridional circulation is not the main one affected, and points to a weakening of the zonal circulation due to the anomalous reduction in the north-south pressure difference indicated by the positive NAO. The weakening of the zonal circulation is responsible for the warming of the SST and the decrease in cloud cover that leads to the increase in energy. Ocean evaporation depends more on wind speed than on SST.
Because the atmosphere is chaotic and evolving rapidly, we are likely to see a reversal of the changes over the next few months, especially as the global circulation tilts after the equinox to transport more heat to the NH and the ITCZ moves into the SH.
What is happening in the SH could be derived from the Hunga-Tonga eruption. It clearly has the potential to affect the polar vortex and, due to the winter stratosphere-troposphere coupling, to affect the meridional wind circulation that causes the SST and sea ice anomalies. The early onset of the ozone hole is an indication of altered stratospheric circulation and perhaps ozone destruction by water vapor.
It is a very interesting year and we are learning a lot.
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Ireneusz Palmowski | August 15, 2023 at 7:31 am | Reply
One might have thought that El Niño would cause the easterly circulation to stall and increase cloud cover over Hawaii. However, the forecasts were wrong. With an increase in solar wind power and energy added to the atmosphere in high latitudes, the easterly circulation remained.
https://i.ibb.co/p0mLGyY/mimictpw-global2-latest.gif
Hawaii remains in a zone of cool and dry northeast winds, as indicated by the negative sea surface anomaly.
When a hurricane approaches, the pressure differential will suddenly increase.
https://i.ibb.co/8xMCH0S/cdas-sflux-ssta-cpac-1.png
https://www.metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/products/ep0823.gifLoading...
R. L. Hails Sr. P. E. (Ret.) | August 15, 2023 at 7:58 am | Reply
This is not my expertise; I am a retired PE with 45 years of practice, a score of nukes, two score carbon fueled power plants who has come to this. If fire, the combustion of carbon in air, is a danger to man then we are doomed. Energy is necessary for life and fire is the sole economical source of energy to sustain eight billion people. Uranium fission can help in advanced nations but requires skill sets unavailable to many nations. IMHO, the end result of climate change policies will be war.
On the technical issues, I note the article is silent on two facts which must dominate our climate. In the last few years, volcanic activity, heretofore unknown, have been found in western Antartica beneath the largest glaciers on earth. The heat is melting the rock/ice lock and they are beginning to slide from elevated heights, thereby raising the risk of a rising sea level. This was not discussed.
The second is that China, in recent years, has built hundreds of modern massive coal fired power plants in Africa, the Middle East and China. Their burn rate dwarfs the US signal. Thus if CO2 is a major contributor to climate change, this input should be quantified and discussed. It is not.
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James Lowrie | August 15, 2023 at 8:31 am | Reply
I would be very interested in seeing figure 3 replicated for the period from 1900 to 1940. I think it would appear very similar.
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Ireneusz Palmowski | August 15, 2023 at 8:55 am | Reply
The ozone hole appeared early this year, but this is not unusual. What is unusual is that over the past few years the ozone hole has set records from October to December. The role of water vapor is extremely debatable as the polar vortex grows in strength, and this is cutting off the flow of ozone over Antarctica.
https://i.ibb.co/vmd1xnj/ozone-hole-plot-N20.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_UGRD_MEAN_JAS_SH_2023.pngLoading...
Ireneusz Palmowski | August 15, 2023 at 9:14 am | Reply
https://i.ibb.co/RcvR4vP/316542692-580914160702231-1574549551462342307-n.jpg
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Joshua | August 15, 2023 at 9:10 am | Reply
All these trends and phenomena associated with evidence of anomalous warming, but one thing is for sure, ABC.
He’s that stadium wave working out?
“The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,” Wyatt said, the paper’s lead author.
Curry added, “This prediction is in contrast to the recently released IPCC AR5 Report that projects an imminent resumption of the warming, likely to be in the range of a 0.3 to 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global mean surface temperature from 2016 to 2035.”
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CKid | August 15, 2023 at 9:49 am | Reply
J
Be patient.
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Joshua | August 15, 2023 at 9:12 am | Reply
Test
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James Steele | August 15, 2023 at 9:26 am | Reply
EXCELLENT analyses!
I especially appreciated the segment pointing to the turbulent flux to the north of Antarctica signifying stronger poleward winds. Most people I talk with are clueless that Antarctica’s sea ice extent is for the most part first year ice driven by the winds, not temperature. Stronger equator-ward winds cause greater sea ice extent in Antarctica’s winter but that thin new sea ice quickly melts each summer. Stronger poleward winds will always cause less sea ice extent.
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Bill Fabrizio | August 15, 2023 at 9:52 am | Reply
Thanks for the time, effort and resources you put into that, Judith.
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PMHinSC | August 15, 2023 at 10:50 am | Reply
The is the first comprehensive, readable, understandable, and cogent explanation I have read. Based on Fig 5 “Global Mean Net Flux Anomaly,” 2023 is the culmination of changes taking place over the past 10 years. Does this analysis leave us in any better position to forecast the next 10 years; or to be more modest, forecast the next 6 months?
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David Wojick | August 15, 2023 at 11:26 am | Reply
I find this conclusion puzzling: “The exceptionally warm global temperature in 2023 is part of a trend of warming since 2015 that is associated primarily with greater absorption of solar radiation in the earth-atmosphere system.”
Looking at Figs 2 & 3, I see no warming trend since 2016, just a long pause. Warmth, yes, but warming no.
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