Author: Bernie McCune

Bernie McCune worked 30 years for and retired from the Physical Science Laboratory. His experience included managing satellite tracking stations, supervising the White Sands solar furnace, supervision of the PSL Space Payloads Section, supporting NASA Goddard space payload operations, and team leader supporting Space Shuttle payload development, fabrication, test, and operations. Mr. McCune's education includes degrees in electronics and biology from NMSU, which included extensive course work in computer science. He began studying climate issues as the result of Michael Mann's well publicized climate alarmism, which caused McCune to begin looking at NM temperature data to see if NM was going to fry. Consequently, he noticed the 60-year cycle in the NM data, which turned out to be the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. After 10 years he found little evidence of man-made warming other than the urban heat island effect. On the other hand, he found evidence of natural cooling and warming cycles everywhere he looked.

Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a Doubling of CO2

by Bernie McCune

[Note:  This post is based on a presentation by Bernie McCune given at the 16 March 2019 meeting of the Cruces Atmospheric Sciences Forum in Las Cruces, NM. Ed.]

It has been 40 years this year since the Charney Report was published with a number of proposals for what CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere from http://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/A-willie-soon-tarot-card-part-9-156x300.jpghuman sources would likely do to global surface temperatures or so-called anthropogenic global warming.  Similarly, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed about that same time to determine the effects of human activity on global temperature.

Over the next few decades a large number of models (at least 73) were developed to show what these effects might be and terms for the models were devised.

Two of these terms, Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and Transient Climate Response (TCR), were developed.  The ECS was the term that Continue reading “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a Doubling of CO2”

Systematic Temperature Error in the Climate Change Discussion

by Bernie McCune

This whole discussion began with a posting on Watts Up With That by Hartmut Hoecht posted on July 11, 2018.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/11/bucket-list-historic-global-ocean-temperature-data-the-missing-pedigree-is-a-comedy-of-errors/

EnclosurePic UofNeb.jpeg
Temperature measurement systems comparison test layout.

It is worth reading the whole thing but I will summarize it here. Various ways of measuring ocean temperatures from long ago until present times are discussed and questions of uncertainty and errors are raised. Recent and even very old reports on sea surface temperature (SST) values are often given in fractions of a degree. In reality, until very recently, the collection process had obvious errors that were greater than one degree.

Cooling periods in the SST records seen in the 1940s and 1970s of 0.3º C were noted in the data with some concern about collection methods but this period is known to be a AMO[efn_note]Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) is a climate cycle index that has a roughly 60 year period.  The natural variation of the average sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean basin from the equator to 80o N is used to produce this index.[/efn_note] (and with less influence PDO[efn_note]Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is another climate cycle index that also has about a 60 year period.  It is related to the El Nino Southern Oscillation  (ENSO) and is a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin. The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, north of 20°N.  It was named by biologist Steven R. Hare in 1997 when he noticed it while studying salmon production pattern results in the North Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California.[/efn_note]) 30 year cooling period. In order to discern these 0.3º C changes in the data, instruments with an accuracy of 0.1º C must be used. The rule of thumb noted that the instrument must have better than three times the accuracy of the targeted Continue reading “Systematic Temperature Error in the Climate Change Discussion”

The Future of Everything

[The Future of Everything presented to CASF: part 1- January 20, 2018 Part 2 – February 17, 2018.  Title borrowed from a Wall Street Journal Magazine Nov/Dec 2017]

by Bernie McCune

No one can really predict the future, but I would like to speculate on it a bit and maybe unravel a few promising threads from the tapestry of time and

clip art courtesy of Iconbug.com

see what one or two future worlds might look like.

 

 

Demographic threads, a discussion of future growth, will Capitalism survive?, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the future, the future of work, emerging medical processes, the future of poverty and the influence of global trade are a few of the hot spots of future development. And what might the future climate turn out to be?

Demographics and the Future

In the past we have briefly discussed global demographic trends and I will only focus on them as they might influence the future of growth, poverty, work and automation issues. Continue reading “The Future of Everything”

A Brief Look at Climate Models Developed by Skeptics

Skeptical modelers show a more realistic view of past, present, and future climate change that follows mostly natural temperature patterns. These models indicate a more benign climate outcome than do the IPCC models. Since they are able to bound the problem of cause and effect, they dramatically reduce the wide uncertainty range of expected global temperature increase due to atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Bernie McCune

When Alarmists say “climate change is real!” I think yes it is, but “real . . . what?” My perhaps flippant answer to that question is real normal, real natural . . . among a few.  I think human caused climate change is real small.  These are some of the real issues that I want to explore here.

Photo courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net

The first point is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) climate models are actually not real at all.  In fact based on the real data, they are turning out to be fairy tales.  Based on the real data, more realistic models are now being developed by very qualified groups and individuals. The improvement in modeling results over those by the IPCC appear Continue reading “A Brief Look at Climate Models Developed by Skeptics”