But, when I try engaging Mr. Steele in a constructive debate by asking some specific questions he replies with calling me an "internet snipers", because I'm skeptical of his claims, investigate them and have the nerve to call him on his misrepresentation. Still he deems my questions an "orchestrated attempt to stop sincere discussion". Then in the comments he claims I've deleted messages from him, though I haven't received anything from him - and he knows I'd be more than happy to take a close look at whatever he sends me.
If he were only up to it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation Part 1:
Climate Sensitivity and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2
Jim Steele
0:14 Thanks so much for inviting me to speak before the IEEE life members, my talk: "Climate change: More Optimism More Debate" is based on years of observations on how climate can change at the local level. I think it provides a powerful analysis, suggests powerful local solutions without worrying about global politics.~ ~ ~
0:35 I'm not a climate scientist in terms of an atmospheric scientist I'm an ecologist.
0:39 I got into the climate game trying to understand, I worked for thirty years up in the Sierra Nevada's about sixty 60 miles north Lake Tahoe and I was trying to understand how local landscape changes changes changed the local climate. I wanted understand how natural cycles like the Pacific decadal oscillation El Ninos changed the climate and it changed wildlife.
It's very different from what you hear from people like a Jim Hansen who's a atmospheric scientist, he started studying climate by looking at planets, where there is no life where there is no oceans. In his view a bit was very top-down he was looking at how changes in radiation changes in atmospheric gases change the radiation budget. So he sees it from a very global perspective, I come to it from a very local perspective.
Why does Jim Steele ignore the obvious fact that our atmosphere is a very global thing, and that climate drives our weather and knows no political borders. Local/regional conditions do influence local/regional weather patterns, but all that happens under one atmosphere who's dramatically increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing the atmosphere's heat insulating ability, thus warming our global heat distribution engine, which is setting our planet on a course of the most radical ecological changes it's experienced in many millions of years.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
1:30 and I would think or what I hoped was that the two would merge, the two would give us a better perspective on, how to understand how our climate is changing, how it's affecting us. Unfortunately people who advocate the climate is highly sensitive to CO2 are antagonistic towards arguments that the climate is also sensitive to landscape changes~ ~ ~
This is fabricated nonsense, scientist are quite aware and have been studying how local conditions impact global scale processes.
A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
Posted on 7 October 2013 by John Mason
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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~1:50 and natural cycles because the more local and regional dynamics can account for recent climate change then by subtraction the climate must be less sensitive to CO2.~ ~ ~
Please listen to Jim talk carefully, maybe you can help me figure out where Jim addresses "local and regional dynamics accounting for recent climate change."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2:00 But thirty years of trying to understand responses of wildlife to local climate change forged my belief that landscape changes and natural cycles such as El Nino, Pacific decadal oscillation are far more powerful drivers of the change then rising concentrations of CO2. So I wrote this book to provide alternative explanations for phenomena that had been blamed on rising CO2 but let me be clear I'm not questioning the CO2 has risen to unprecedented levels and I'm not questioning that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that's undeniable science.~ ~ ~ ~
Then why is Steele deliberately ignoring the known consequences of these increased greenhouse gases?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2:30 However I am definitely questioning assertions that CO2 is the driver of the past centuries climate changes.~ ~ ~
And this is based on Steele's own anecdotal experiences while focused on the health of meadow land - Basically Steele is claiming that his own personal observation are more valid then the tens of thousands of man hours of actual experts in the field of atmospheric physics.
(Keep in mind one directional skepticism equals denial !)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2:42 When people are blinded by the belief that CO2 has contributed every recent change, they blame CO2 for every drought and every heat wave, as well as every flood and every cold wave.~ ~ ~
Wait a minute Steele, you start with "contributed" to, then change to "blame everything on" - huge difference there! This is the tactic of debate club members, but it has nothing to do with learning from the accumulating evidence of experts.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2:53 I watched so-called documentaries blames CO2 for the war in Syria and websites blame CO2 for the spread of Ebola and the increase in stray kittens.~ ~ ~
Here Steele crossed the line into utterly contemptuous behavior. To begin with, who cares what the under-informed are telling us? It the information and knowledge gleaned by serious professional experts that we should be discussing. But, notice that Steele stays miles away from their authoritative information.
Beyond that Steele pretends that crop failures don't impact civil unrest.
Regarding Syria:No. 11 | February 29, 2012
Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest
Francesco Femia and Caitlin E. Werrell
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08/16/2012 - 16:27
Climate change and the Syrian uprising
Shahrzad Mohtadi
Among the many historical, political, and economic factors contributing to the Syrian uprising, one has been devastating to Syria, yet remains largely unnoticed by the outside world. That factor is the complex and subtle, yet powerful role that climate change has played in affecting the stability and longevity of the state.
The land now encompassed by Syria is widely credited as being the place where humans first experimented with agriculture and cattle herding, some 12,000 years ago. Today, the World Bank predicts the area will experience alarming effects of climate change, with the annual precipitation level shifting toward a permanently drier condition, increasing the severity and frequency of drought.
From 1900 until 2005, there were six droughts of significance in Syria; the average monthly level of winter precipitation during these dry periods was approximately one-third of normal. All but one of these droughts lasted only one season; the exception lasted two. Farming communities were thus able to withstand dry periods by falling back on government subsidies and secondary water resources. This most recent, the seventh drought, however, lasted from 2006 to 2010, an astounding four seasons -- a true anomaly in the past century. Furthermore, the average level of precipitation in these four years was the lowest of any drought-ridden period in the last century. ...
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Drought helped cause Syria’s war. Will climate change bring more like it?
By Brad Plumer | September 10, 2013
Quoting Francesco Femia: "We found it very interesting that right up to the day before the revolt began in Daraa, many international security analysts were essentially predicting that Syria was immune to the Arab Spring. They concluded it was generally a stable country. What they had missed was that a massive internal migration was happening, mainly on the periphery, from farmers and herders who had lost their livelihoods completely.
Around 75 percent of farmers suffered total crop failure, so they moved into the cities. Farmers in the northeast lost 80 percent of their livestock, so they had to leave and find livelihoods elsewhere. They all moved into urban areas — urban areas that were already experiencing economic insecurity due to an influx of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. But this massive displacement mostly wasn't reported. So it wasn't factoring into various security analyses. People assumed Syria was relatively stable compared to Egypt."- - -
As for Ebola, here's an interesting read for some perspective:
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http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n9/full/nclimate2318.htmlNATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | LETTERIncreasing forest disturbances in Europe and their impact on carbon storage
Rupert Seidl, Mart-Jan Schelhaas, Werner Rammer & Pieter Johannes Verkerk
Nature Climate Change 4, 806–810 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2318Received 14 October 2013 Accepted 27 June 2014
"Disturbances from wind, bark beetles and wildfires have increased in Europe’s forests throughout the twentieth century1. Climatic changes were identified as a key driver behind this increase2 ..."
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With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Published: October 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
WISE RIVER, Mont. — "The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening. ..."
3:02 Driven by such exaggerated fears, the believers in climate's high sensitivity CO2 have tried to marginalize legitimate skepticism~ ~ ~
Notice Steele's little twist of facts? Steele writes: "believers in climate's high sensitivity CO2". But, what we are observing has nothing to do with an arbitrary "high sensitivity". This is about what is being observed as happening, as a result of increased CO2 that we have definitely injected into our atmosphere - it's unrelated to any "number" scientists are struggling with refining. Another indicator that Steele is more interested in emotional appeal than any teaching or learning.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
they portray any skepticism as outside the scientific consensus.~ ~ ~
This is shear nonsense - skepticism is alive and well within the climatological community as anyone who has given them a good-faith hearing knows full well. It's the climate science "skeptic's" repetition of lies such as this very creative bizarre mixing of facts and story-lines Steele has fabricated that's an example of what serious science types abhor.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Where there is absolutely no consensus on climate sensitivity to CO2. None.~ ~ ~
This one is more than nonsense, it's malicious* contemptible garbage - scientific graphs have a way of looking of like "scribbles" have you ever looked at seismic data?
(*with intent to cause harm)
As for consensus there certainly is a consensus.
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report summarized climate sensitivity as "likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values."
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Explained: Climate sensitivity
If we double the Earth’s greenhouse gases, how much will the temperature change? That’s what this number tells you.
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
March 19, 2010
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Climate sensitivity: Plus ça change…Gavin Schmidt @ 24 March 2006 - RealClimate.org
Almost 30 years ago, Jule Charney made the first modern estimate of the range of climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. He took the average from two climate models (2ºC from Suki Manabe at GFDL, 4ºC from Jim Hansen at GISS) to get a mean of 3ºC, added half a degree on either side for the error and produced the canonical 1.5-4.5ºC range which survived unscathed even up to the IPCC TAR (2001) report. Admittedly, this was not the most sophisticated calculation ever, but individual analyses based on various approaches have not generally been able to improve substantially on this rough estimate, and indeed, have often suggested that quite high numbers (>6ºC) were difficult to completely rule out. However, a new paper in GRL this week by Annan and Hargreaves combines a number of these independent estimates to come up with the strong statement that the most likely value is about 2.9ºC with a 95% probability that the value is less than 4.5ºC.- - -
Climate sensitivity wrangles don’t change the big picture on emissions
Andy Extance - March 29, 2014
How much does the world warm up in response to a certain amount of greenhouse gases like CO2 in the atmosphere? It’s a simple question, but its answer depends on whether you mean short-term or long-term warming, and estimates vary according to the methods used. Scientists are currently intensively debating long-term ‘climate sensitivity’, which begs prompts the question: might we be pushing too hard to cut climate CO2 emissions, if this is uncertain?
The answer is no, according to Joeri Rogelj from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, and his coworkers. They looked at how a range of climate sensitivity values affected their 21st century warming projections in a paper published in Environmental Research Letters last week.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Journal reference:
Rogelj, J., Meinshausen, M., Sedláček, J., & Knutti, R. (2014). Implications of potentially lower climate sensitivity on climate projections and policy Environmental Research Letters, 9 (3) DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/031003
3:20 Ignore all the surveys they're just political theater you simply need to look at the different results from the different models.~ ~ ~
Now Steele jumps to "surveys" - surveys about what? Does he call that compilation of climate model outputs a survey? Is he talking about contrived "surveys" such as the 31,000 out of that Oregon Institute, or the many surveys of scientific studies that reveal roughly 97% of them fit within the Anthropogenic induced Global Warming consensus? What is he talking about?
I suspect this is another political dog whistle intend on pushing the malicious notion that the science is nothing but political theater.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3:28 This scribble it looks like the scribble of a disturbed second grader, this is the consensus.~ ~ ~
This sounds like nothing but an argument from ignorance and prejudice, Jim trying to lead his audience. And yes it is very difficult to understand, which is why the experts spend years and decades dedicated to studying and learning about all the details that totally elude us regular folk.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3:35 This is what the consensus is, each one of these strands represents a model created by a group of scientists in how they understand climate change to be happening driven by CO2.~ ~ ~
For the record climate science contrarians have worked very hard to set up the expectation that climate models are supposed to be perfect windows into the future. This is another impossible expectation. Climate models are learning tools to better understand the dynamics at work and their interpretation requires an understanding of the science that went into the models. Steele isn't interested in that - bashing inconvenient complex science seems his only goal.
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3:49 It is looking at the how the temperature changes in the mid troposphere and you see between 1975 in 2020 the predictions are all over the place.~ ~ ~
Not really, exclude the outliers and there certainly is a distinct and worrying pattern visible. As for the variability between the higher and lower end of that spectrum, it just means that if we are lucky enough to be at the lower end that the impending changing to our biosphere will happen at a slightly slower pace - that's all.
WHY WE USE CLIMATE MODELS
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~3:58 In that span a time, they think maybe it'll warm half a degree and some believe it's gonna go two degrees. What's more telling is that none of those predictions match was being observed.
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According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and shown in this series of maps, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8°Celsius (1.4°Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade.
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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~4:09 If you look at bottom those squares and circles are observations from weather balloons, their observations from satellites. So you can see is that what we're observing for this temperature change is much lower than what these models are doing.~ ~ ~
4:26 So you would think that would make people say it is more debate probably CO2 isn't as sensitive and there are more papers and we've overestimated how sensitive the environment.
Steele is conveniently ignoring most of our global heat distribution engine, namely the ocean warming. It's this sort of manipulation and censoring of important information that is the hallmark of a confirmed denialist, or if you will contrarian for hire.
- - -
Explainer: what is climate sensitivity?
Rob Colman is a Principal Research Scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology which operates under the authority of the Meteorology Act 1955 and provides Australians with environmental intelligence for their safety, sustainability, well-being and prosperity.
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How sensitive is our climate?
- - -
Climate change: The case of the missing heat
Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are piecing together an explanation.
Jeff Tollefson | 15 January 2014
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Ocean warming in Southern Hemisphere underestimated, scientists suggest
DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | October 6, 2014
Using satellite observations and a large suite of climate models, scientists have found that long-term ocean warming in the upper 700 meters of Southern Hemisphere oceans has likely been underestimated. Ocean heat storage is important because it accounts for more than 90 percent of Earth's excess heat that is associated with global warming.
- - -
What ocean heating reveals about global warming
stefan @ 25 September 2013
The heat content of the oceans is growing and growing. That means that the greenhouse effect has not taken a pause and the cold sun is not noticeably slowing global warming.NOAA posts regularly updated measurements of the amount of heat stored in the bulk of the oceans. For the upper 2000 m (deeper than that not much happens) it looks like this:
4:37 But, instead it because it's so politicized and this actually scares me more than anything that CO2 could do, is this pushed to try to suppress any kind of skepticism.~ ~ ~
But will the Steele ever look in the mirror and recognize what he is doing here by ignoring so much important information?
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4:46 There's a push to try to get rid of any kind of skepticism,~ ~ ~
No Jim it's the lying about science that politically inspired contrarians depend on that is contemptible and should be gotten rid of.
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there's push to try to get rid of the debate, so you see people like David Suzuki a scientist saying deny the deniers the right to deny (based on lies).~ ~ ~
Debate for the sake of debate is idiotic and quite counterproductive!
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4:55 To me that defiles science. Michael Mann says anytime you're skeptical your anti-science, there's a war on science.~ ~ ~
No any time you're deliberately repeating lie about the accumulated scientific knowledge you are conducting a war on science and learning.
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5:03 Kevin Trenberth is probably one of the chief architects of a lot of the current ideas of CO2 global warming and he had a speech called "communicating climate science"~ ~ ~
Here's another nonsensical sentence that's pure politics and innuendo intended on lathering up the faithful. Any serious investigation of the development of the scientific understanding of CO2's atmospheric behavior starts in the 1800s - and includes a great many brilliant skeptical minds who strove to collect, process and understand Earth Observations. Don't believe me? Take a look:
The Discovery of Global Warming
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~5:11 In it he advocated to his colleagues do not debate deniers, because it will it will give more credibility to alternative explanations and then what seems like a veiled threat to the rest the community he had this cartoon on the printed version of that speech and the cartoon says climate change isn't the biggest threat to the planet, Climate skeptics are." Now imagine if you were going to publish and you wanted to get funding through the organization where he has a lot of power, if you had an ounce of skepticism in you, would you want to tell people about it, would you want to be branded is the biggest threat to the planet?~ ~ ~
Well if you don't have any respect for the evidence, if you believe it's fine to endlessly repackage and repeat demonstrable lies, then you have no place in science and good riddance to you!
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5:48 So actually what makes me optimistic is people like yourselves want to hear more debate, you want to hear more discussion.~ ~ ~
More nonsense, your audience wants an excuse to ignore all the information at hand and you are happy to give it.
As for skepticism I notice you are quite hostile towards anyone who questions you - how does that fit into your scheme?
Jim why do you find it OK to ignore important evidence?
Kevin Trenberth on denialists, climate science communication, and climate change policy
Posted on February 22, 2011 by Rick Piltz
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~6:01 I never was a skeptic to begin with,~ ~ ~
Meaning Steele was never a serious science type to begin with! Honest skepticism is the cornerstone of science!
Might be able to explain why he's slipped into his current role.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I actually used to teach global warming because it was scary to make people stop and listen and it was a way to teach how carbon cycles and stuff works.~ ~ ~
He taught it because it was scary?! What kind of game was he into?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I became a skeptic when I was hired by the Tahoe US Forest Service to monitor the bird populations and wet meadows in the Sierra Nevada in the Tahoe National Forest.~ ~ ~
What an astounding leap of avoidance - the central issue of manmade global warming is that our planet's atmosphere's insulating ability is increasing, which leads to countless cascading consequences. Of course, our planet is very complex with many cogs and wheels so to speak, of course scientists don't fully understand all the details.
For a review of the known facts that Steele deliberately hides from his audience:
Climate change: How do we know?
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
- - -How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?
- - -
How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?
- - -
And here's a story about the ever increasing knowledge that honest skepticism produces:
As Earth left the last ice age, CO2 rose in fits and starts
Several jumps point to a driver different from the usual suspect.
by Scott K. Johnson - Nov 3 2014,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~6:26 And one of the meadow had a crash in all the populations in what we saw here was the the meadow dried out the willows started to die and other wildlife started to leave.~ ~ ~
6:37 Now the first reaction from everybody was oh my god this is just what the climate scientists said,
Who's this everyone? The newspapers? students? pundits? Is there any scientific study that can support Jim's claims that this was caused by AGW? If not, Jim's blowing smoke.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
6:45 CO2 was gonna warm the earth, is gonna dry the soil, is gonna kill the plants and we're gonna see widespread extinction.~ ~ ~
This glib dismissal ignores the trend and where it's taking us. Look at the big picture:
The global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005. That of methane increased from a pre-industrial value of about 715 ppb to 1732 ppb in the early 1990s, and was 1774 ppb in 2005. The global atmospheric nitrous oxide concentration increased from a pre-industrial value of about 270 ppb to 319 ppb in 2005.
Carbon dioxide-induced climate change and desertification remain inextricably linked because of feedbacks between land degradation and precipitation. Water resources are inextricably linked with climate. Annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10-40% at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and decrease by 10-30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics. Soils exposed to degradation as a result of poor land management could become infertile as a result of climate change.Climate change may exacerbate desertification through alteration of spatial and temporal patterns in temperature, rainfall, solar radiation and winds. The impacts can be described as follows:• Soil properties and processes—including organic mat- ter decomposition, leaching, and soil water regimes— will be influenced by temperature increase;• At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C);• Agricultural production in many African regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate vari- ability and change. The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease;• In the drier areas of Latin America, climate change is expected to lead to salinisation and desertification of agricultural land;• In Southern Europe, higher temperatures and more frequent drought are expected to reduce water availability, hydropower potential, and, in general, crop productivity.
DESERTIFICATION: THE FORGOTTEN SIDE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Santiago Miret | September 30, 2013
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~6:50 I've had students in tears thinking that half the world is already extinct.~ ~ ~
No time-frame is offered, just a simplistic claim for a compliant audience of the like minded. But if we slow down enough to think about western civilization's impact on this planet there is plenty to cry about and well over half of what used to be in California, or American, or this continent is gone, extinct never to bless humanity again, and we are in the process of consuming the rest. Am I exaggerating? I think not.
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- - -- - -
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Used planet: A global history
Erle C. Ellis, Jed O. Kaplan, Dorian Q. Fuller, Steve Vavrus, Kees Klein Goldewijk, and Peter H. Verburg
Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved April 3, 2013
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Anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere
Erle C. Ellis | 2011 The Royal Society
And there is plenty more as a search for "assessing human impacts on planet's biosphere" at Google Scholar will reveal.
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6:56 However there's one huge glaring problem, with such a simplistic analysis global average rarely reflect the local reality. It might be wise to think globally, but all organisms react locally, always.~ ~ ~
Talk about simplistic analysis... well sure, organism always react locally, no one is arguing that, but they are still shackled to the state of the global biosphere and climate!
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7:12 So if you have an ecological problem you have a biological problem you have to start from the bottom up approach, you have to look at how local climate changes.~ ~ ~
Jim is talking apples and carrots here - to restore a meadow hydrology doesn't take any climate change awareness, but of course let us not forget that a changing climate may render all your best effort futile, but that's a different story.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You have to look at what all the different factors were that caused that. You can't start saying oh global warming did it. And people jump on that all the time.~ ~ ~
Again, we've already established that the general public get's it wrong quite often, unless they take the time to learn from folks who have dedicated their lives to studying and understanding these complex matters.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So that's why you get all those crazy things, that everything in the world can become if you think CO2 is causing the change, then every change is that.~ ~ ~
Ironically, saying all this Steele has his arms waving all over place, quite apropos, since that is all he's doing here, conflating and mixing distinctly different matters. Trimming and massaging facts to fit his story-line, rather then allow the fact to develop the story, which is the honest scientific method.
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{Continued at "#B Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation: Climate and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2, examined"}
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