I rode up to NCAR earlier and went into their museum for my Trenberth provided weekly comedy. I was not disappointed.
This video explained how the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) affects winter temperatures in Canada and Europe. That part of the video was interesting and informative.
But then the stupidity began. This guy cherry-picked an interval starting in 1975 and ending in 2000 – which he blamed on CO2.
Had he included the entire time series, the audience would have seen that the NAO plummeted from 1995 to 2010, making his assertion about CO2 affecting the NAO completely mindless and absurd.
ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wd52dg/data/indices/nao_index.tim
Had he wanted to prove global cooling, he could have done the same trick starting in 1930 and ending in 1975.
These are our country’s top climate scientists – and they would all fail freshman engineering classes for dishonesty and incompetence.
I came across this quote from President Eisenhower from his farewell address:
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Careful there. The latest theory is that the warming is making it colder, and that could include the NAO.
“Had he included the entire time series, the audience would have seen that the NAO plummeted from 1995 to 2010, making his assertion about CO2 affecting the NAO completely mindless and absurd.”
But he could then say the extreme warming is now causing cooling and effecting the NAO. There is no possibility of ever being just wrong, so they can say anything. Even change facts later. There is no winning against such science.
I hope my sarcasm is self evident.
They tell us that for something to be climate, it must be based on a 30 year span. As you point out, the last 20 years have shown a steep cooling trend of the NAO. Just eyeballing the chart, even the last 30 years show an overall cooling. Doesn’t that 30 years make it an official “cooling climate”, at least in regards the NAO?
thanks jason. pls give us a citation for the 30 year span principle.
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/normals.html
Hey Chaam! Perhaps I should add that personally, I do not think 30 years makes much sense — but none the less, that is the accepted span used by the CAGW crowd. Why is 30 years not right? Because there seem to be numerous cycles involved, and most of them are longer than 30 years. If you have a 60 or 70 year cycle and pick any 30 year portion of it, chances are that you will show an anomalous trend that does not actually exist over the full cycle. Consider a one kilometer long roller coaster; pick any 100 meter section you like and it will probably have a non-zero slope, even though the track, taken as a whole, ends up exactly where it started.
Since the thirty year trend for the Eastern US and Canada (as well as the central regions) is cooling fro D-J-F, it’s safe to say the climate there is cooling. Except of course it’s not that simple.
If it rebounds back to normal after an unusual series of cold years, leading climate scientists consider that to be catastrophic warming. Very convenient way to keep the gravy train running!
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.