Q&A Following Dr. David Gutzler’s Water Conservation Workshop

by Bob Endlich

[Dr Gutzler conducted the 1 March 2018 “Lush and Lean” water conservation workshop in Las Cruces in the Roadrunner Room of the Branigan Library from 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM:  About an hour-long lecture of 21 Slides, followed by questions and answers. The nominal topic was, “Learn about projecting future water supplies in a rapidly changing climate.” I prepared this memo the next day, 2 March 2018 and have edited it a bit in the time since.  I provide it in this post as a small part of the overall climate debate.]

C:UsersBobDesktopPictures and Graphs 7Apr2016NNM__3.png
Bob Endlich at News NM Radio Set

Overall Gutzler did only a fair job explaining the development of the present La Nina and the present and impending drought conditions; I rate it as ‘only fair’ because he did not mention either the 2016 El Nino or features of El Nino-Southern Oscillation, he mentioned the Pacific Decadal Oscillation but did not explain it, or it’s 60-year periodicity.

[This is perhaps professional one-upsmanship on my part, because I think and thought at the time that my presentations on the subject are better than his, an example of my most recent on this subject is at the web site, https://casf.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/PDF_Climate-History-and-El-Nino_ENSO-_3_Oct_2017.pdf Slides 34 to 122]

Dr. Gutzler devoted perhaps only 5 minutes to the “increasing greenhouse gasses are causing anthropogenic climate change,” but this point was the last one in the three points he emphasized in his concluding slide.

There were a couple of people who approached Gutzler after the talk was over; I was the last and introduced myself; we have Continue reading “Q&A Following Dr. David Gutzler’s Water Conservation Workshop”

Science, Philosophy and Inquiry on a Galactic Scale: A conversation with Dr. Willie Soon

[This is a reprint of a blog from the Friends of Science web site by Grégoire Canlorbe.  This post originally appeared on Friends of Science and also on Grégoire Canlorbe’s site.  We are reprinting it with the permission of Dr. Willie Soon and the author, Grégoire Canlorbe.  ed]

April 12, 2018

Contributed by Grégoire Canlorbe © 2017     These are the opinions of the author and interviewee. Updated with additional citations/links April 12, 2018 at 11:14 AM MST.

  • Dr. Willie Soon is an independent solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been studying the Sun and its influence on the Earth’s climate for more than a quarter of a century. A short while ago, he had a conversation with Mr. Grégoire Canlorbe, an independent journalist who is also vice president of the French Parti National-Libéral (“National-Liberal Party,” conservative, nationalist, and free-marketist). Here Dr. Soon speaks for himself.

http://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/A-dr-willie-soon-Gc-article-1-300x300.png
Canlorbe: You say polar bears are far less endangered by global warming than by environmentalists dreading ice melt. Could you expand?

Dr. Soon: Yes, indeed. I have argued that too much ice will be the ultimate enemy for polar bears. Polar bears need less sea ice to be well fed and to reproduce. Why? Think about this for a minute: Polar bears eat a lot. Any large colony will need a great deal of food. The bears’ Continue reading “Science, Philosophy and Inquiry on a Galactic Scale: A conversation with Dr. Willie Soon”

The Madden-Julian Oscillation: a weather system Wikipedia lists under Climate Change

by Robert W. Endlich

A significant weather system which affects the globe was not even discovered until the 1970s, perhaps because it is stronger in the Southern Hemisphere than the Northern. This system, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, is an area of enhanced rainfall with these characteristics:

The enhanced precipitation anomaly starts in the Indian Ocean; it always moves eastward, and usually moves from Indian Ocean into mid-Pacific at speeds of 9-19 Miles/Hour. In addition to the enhanced precipitation area itself, there is an associated area of suppressed precipitation, an out-of-phase area ahead of it, usually way out ahead of it. The disturbed weather areas usually last 30 to sometimes 90 days.

The convective precipitation signature of this system is strongest within 15 degrees north and south of the Equator. Continue reading “The Madden-Julian Oscillation: a weather system Wikipedia lists under Climate Change”

Climate F-Words

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

[Ed.  Dr. Roy Spencer wrote a post (22 March 2018) disagreeing with Lord Monckton’s theory that climate scientists have over-estimated feedback by a factor of 2, because they have been using the feedback  equations incorrectly.  Dr. Spencer agrees with the factor of 2 error, but he disagrees with the reason given by Lord Monckton.  In response, Lord Monckton has countered Dr. Spencer’s argument with a post of his own on Spencer’s blog.  The original Spencer post can be found here with Lord Monckton’s counter argument  here.]

recent article by Lord Christopher Monckton over at WUWT argues that there has been an “elementary error of physics” that has led to climate sensitivity being overestimated by about a factor of 2.

I agree with the conclusion but not the reason why. It is already known from the work of Otto et ahttp://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Trump-forcing-and-feedback-550x309.jpgl. (2013), Lewis & Curry (2015) and others that the climate system (including the deep oceans) has warmed by an amount that suggests a climate sensitivity only about half of what the models produce (AR5 models warm by an average of 3.4 deg. C in response to a doubling of CO2).

But the potential reasons why are many, and as far as I can tell not dependent upon Christopher’s arguments. For those who don’t know, Lord Monckton is a pretty talented mathematician. However, like others I have encountered over the years, I believe he errs in his assumptions about how the climate research community uses — and does or does not depend upon — the concept of feedback in climate modeling. Continue reading “Climate F-Words”

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”