Tag: climate science

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”

An evening lecture with Alarmist Katharine Hayhoe

By Robert W. Endlich

Las Cruces is home to New Mexico State University, New Mexico’s Land-Grant college.  When I attended my first of the NMSU Climate Change Education Seminar Series presentations, I found that it’s funded by Climate Alarmist Senator Tom Udall, (D-NM). A news release announced the 6 Feb 2019 lecture guest presenter was Katharine Hayhoe, from Texas Tech.

I had previously istened to Dr. Hayhoe on NPR’s broadcast of The Commonwealth Club, supposedly non-partisan,  anything but,  and

Typical university lecture hall. Source unknown.

heavy into the gloom and doom climate alarmist narrative, as I previously noted here.

The topic for her 6 Feb 2019 lecture was, “Barriers to Public Acceptance of Climate Science, Impacts, and Solutions.”

Katharine Hayhoe presents an earnest, wholesome, almost rural and folksy image such as this one from the Guardian, showing smiling Katharine with the windmill in the background.

To prepare for attending Dr Hayhoe’s lecture, I watched one of her previous Continue reading “An evening lecture with Alarmist Katharine Hayhoe”

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.]

A 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”

Eleven-Year Major Hurricane Drought: Much More Unusual than Two Cat 4 Strikes

the statistics of rare events (like hurricanes) are not very well behaved. Let’s look at this new record, and compared it to the 11+year period of no major hurricane strikes that ended when Harvey struck Texas.

Roy Spencer

[This is a reprint (21 Sep 2017) from Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog (drroyspencer.com) in which he makes the point that two category 4 hurricanes making landfall in the same year is far more likely than the recent  eleven year period with no major hurricane landfalls that preceeded the two category 4 hurricanes.  Assuming the 177 year return period for no major hurricanes in 9 years estimated by NASA was correct, we agree with Dr. Spencer that the return period for no major hurricanes in 11 years would be 560 years.  Ed.]

Weather.com published an article noting that the two Cat 4 hurricane strikes this year (Harvey and Irma) is a new record. Here’s a nice graphic they used showing both storms at landfall.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/irma-harvey-split-550x309.jpg
Left: Hurricane Harvey makes landfall near Rockport, Texas, on Aug. 25, 2017 | Right: Hurricane Irma makes its first landfall at Cudjoe Key, Florida, on Sept. 10, 2017 (graphic: Weather.com).

Continue reading “Eleven-Year Major Hurricane Drought: Much More Unusual than Two Cat 4 Strikes”