Effects of Warming

Its a Floor Wax and A Desert Topping

15 Comments

It is not hard to find juxtapositions of news articles with the media blaming man-made global warming for two contradictory effects – e.g. more snow / less snow.  But this is one of the most stark, with articles within a year of each other blaming global warming for both more and less fog in San Francisco.  When the global warming fear finally collapses, I think the lesson that will be retained by future activitsts will be this “heads I win, Tails you lose” form of alarmism.

15 thoughts on “Its a Floor Wax and A Desert Topping”

  1. Such seemingly contradictory effects are most often manifest during an extended warming period after 15 years of statistically insignificant warming. When global temperatures appear to stabilize, the underlying climate change forces an increase to local climate variability.

    (sarcasm)

  3. That’s much like the explanation(s) for daily fluctuation in stock market prices: whatever you want it to be.

  4. I am hearing about how this snow and suppose record cold weather can be attributed to Global Warming. I do not have the data but I have lived in Florida all my life and can not remember ever having the heat on for so long.

    But my question is….If Global Warming were indeed the cause of this cold and snow…wouldn’t that be an example of the negative feedback discussed in the clip Catastrophe Denied????

  5. Now, it’s not just a comparison of contradictions between two articles…

    Contradictory weather changes prove climate!

    See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html

    More snow, or less snow = climate change
    More precipitation, or less precipitation = climate change
    Drier or Wetter weather = climate change.

    So if climate change (which he suggests calling “global wierding”) can be used to explain any weather variation, in any direction, at any location, how is the hypothesis testable?

    Is it even within the realm of science?

    Is anybody else reminded of the god-did-it-but-you-can-never-test-the-theory logic of Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

  7. @ Jim,
    No, local climate moving against a general trend would not be good example of negative feedback.

    The general idea is that even though the amount of energy in a system is increasing, all areas will not see a uniform increase. Some localities may see a decrease in temp because warming has moved an ocean current, or caused more rainfall, or shifted wind patterns –in their area–. The system as a whole will still be getting warmer. That’s the theory anyway.

    Negative feedback doesn’t mean temps will drop, just that they’ll rise less. You really have to examine feedback as it applies to the whole planet, not just a single locality.

  8. There’s one more eventuality. If they can predict neither more fog nor less fog, they can still predict The Wrong Sort of Fog. Just wait and see.

  11. Okay, seems like I’m always pointing out the obvious – but for people ostensibly interested in “science” you sure are dependent on a couple of particular newspapers (particularly the Times UK). So…

    Both these are newspaper articles interpreting what scientists have said, so perhaps they are not the best scientific source.

    One scientist, the ‘fogless’ one, is an ecological biologist and worried about the redwoods. He is hypothesizing about what will happen if there is not enough moisture in the air to interact with redwood forests.

    The others are climate scientists who are doing measurements of fog and hypothesizing about the effect ocean temperatures will be having on Bay Area fog.

    Probably we should believe what the climate scientists say. But even if we don’t, we are reading about two different hypotheses from two different sets of scientists. I know it is more fun to simply assault the scientific community for not having an answer on the spur of the moment, but even I know that sometimes scientists will disagree. This is part of the process.

    Which just seems so obvious…

    Oh well, guess it’s more fun to simply cry chicken at every opportunity.

  12. Reading comprehension, Waldo. Warren said right up front that this tidbit was about how the media was willing to attribute diametrically opposed phenomena to global warming, and how future activists will likely behave. As this is a post about how laypeople behave, the science of the situation is kind of irrelevant to the discussion.

  13. Right. Thank you, Nathan. Now I wonder, since the media appears to be a bit untrustworthy (and to be fair, it is not the media’s job to “attribute” anything, but to report on what is happening or what people say [it is not the journalist’s job to decide whether the science appears to be contradictory or not])can we trust the media with stories on Pachauri or Hansen or Mann or the CRU? Or do we just point out discrepancies when it has to do with discrepancies in the GW science?

    Seems to me that Mr. Meyer and the crowds here are fairly dependent on the media for their information and opinions, but only under certain circumstances.

  14. Waldo,
    “Seems to me that WALDO and the AGW true believers are fairly dependent on the media for their information and opinions, but only under certain circumstances.”
    Now that shoe fits rather well.

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