Showing posts with label Landscape Changes vs CO2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Landscape Changes vs CO2. Show all posts

Thursday, April 16, 2015

#9 Steele's heat waves and the AGW fallacy - CC/Steele Landscapesandcycles Debate


A virtual debate with Jim Steele, based on his interview at Heartland Institute: 


Heartland Daily Podcast | Jim Steele | January 27, 2015 
Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett (for the National Center for Policy Analysis) interviews Jim Steele, ecologist, director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada field campus of San Francisco State University
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Steele writes:  "And we trust the scientific theory because its been fairly tested by others - the theory must out perform all alternate explanations, eliminate confounding factors plus lively debate.  But, what I was finding was the scientific process was being defiled when scientists refused to debate in public. ... and any attempt to prevent that debate, in our schools, in the media, in peer reviewed science, it's only denigrating the scientific process.  ... And I think those public debates would help create real climate literacy …"
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Well then Mr. Steele, let's have our Great Global Warming Science Debate.  
I will accept these responses from your Heartland Institute podcast as your opening round.  I'll offer my rebuttals, evidence and questions.  I agree to post your thoughtful responses unaltered. (Though it's looking like you're going to do your best to hide and ignore these critiques of your self-certain claims. Your silence will serve to expose your hypocrisy and inability to defend your statements on an even playing field.)
In this ninth installment we'll look at one of your "biggest pet peeves that every heat wave get's trumpeted as evidence of global warming" ...oh my.
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"How should society contend with those who knowingly disseminate misinformation about climate science."  Lawrence Torcello
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Steele:  You mentioned there was the sort of the high temperatures, you know one of my biggest pet peeves is that every heat wave get's trumpeted as evidence of global warming  
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To begin with you don't specify who's doing the "trumpeting", so it's a meaningless complaint.

Your consistent use of such deliberate vagueness underscores your deceptive intensions.

More important, why are you rejecting what scientists and researchers are observing?

NASA | 2014 Continues Long-Term Global Warming 



Published on Jan 16, 2015
The year 2014 now ranks as the warmest on record since 1880, 
according to an analysis by NASA scientists.
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Steele:  but the heat waves usually occur under very dry conditions. Dry conditions allow the earth and air to heat up much more quickly.  And when you get this high pressure settle in, it allows for greater solar insolation, that heats the land more quickly and that high pressure dome prevents convection that would carry away that heat, much like rolling up the windows in your car, watching your car heat up.  And because water vapor makes up 80% of the greenhouse gases or even more, the heat waves are actually happening when there's a drop in the concentration of greenhouse gases.  
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Jim, your myopic focus on the local seems to have blinded you to the global.  That was a horrendous description of what a heat wave is all about.  

Since you won't allow yourself to trust me, how about learning from the venerable Farmers Almanac?

"A heat wave occurs when a system of high atmospheric pressure moves into an area. In such a high-pressure system, air from upper levels of our atmosphere is pulled toward the ground, where it becomes compressed and increases in temperature.

"This high concentration of pressure makes it difficult for other weather systems to move into the area, which is why a heat wave can last for several days or weeks. The longer the system stays in an area, the hotter the area becomes. The high-pressure inhibits winds, making them faint to nonexistent. Because the high-pressure system also prevents clouds from entering the region, sunlight can become punishing, heating up the system even more. The combination of all of these factors come together to create the exceptionally hot temperatures we call a heat wave."
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Steele:  But people are blaming heat wave increase on greenhouse gases.  
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Mr. Jim Steele, here again is an example of you crossing the line into the realm of perhaps legally actionable offenses.  
I'm no authority on the law, but I do know a thing or two about upholding morals and ethics and the learning process.  

For a person who claims to be educated and enlightened in the ways and accomplishments of science, to stand in front of an audience and ridicule the overwhelming scientific and technical understanding regarding CO2 and other greenhouse gases holding in more heat within our global climate system is unconscionable.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

#B Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation: Climate and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2, examined

This the second half of my review of Jim Steele's recent talk. 
The first half can be viewed at 
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/11/steeles-ieee-talk-landscape-changes-vs.html
{I fear tomorrow evening when I can get back to double checking these two posts, I'll find more typos then I care to, but it's too late now, and don't want to wait till tomorrow evening to post this. }


"Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation Part 1: Climate Sensitivity and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2" by Jim Steele

7:37  To look locally, look there's a network the US historical climate network and the nearest one where we were doing our work was in Tahoe City and there's a couple things that stood out.  The first thing was in the thirties it was warmer, so how could global warming be accumulating heat if it was warmer in the thirties.  See CO2 couldn't be, you'd have to see something higher than the thirties. Where's this accumulation.
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Jim Steele seems to be going by the assumption that global warming means that the entire globe is suppose to warm at the same rate every where.  That's tragically disconnected from the reality of our global biosphere.  Furthermore, it's quite ironic how he shrugs off the significance of the night time trend and in fact the day time trend since 1966.

More importantly Jim's using one graph from one location and calling it a slam dunk, those who are interested in learning about what's actually happening need to cast a wider net, might I suggest:

Tahoe Climate Information Management System
A joint collaboration between the Desert Research Institute and UC Davis
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Climate change in the Tahoe basin: regional trends, impacts and drivers

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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

#A Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation: Climate and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2, examined

The other day I had the dubious serendipitous honor of being the first viewer of a YouTube video from Jim Steele a rising star within the climate science contrarian movement with a book to sell.  Jim starts his talk promising: "I think it (my talk) provides a powerful analysis, suggests powerful local solutions without worrying about global politics." and finishes it with: "I think I made it clear how much landscape change can affect the climate."

Well he didn't make anything clear except that he thinks we should ignore what scientists have learned in well over a century of study.  What I find ironic is that the same guy who says stuff like: (4:46)  There's a push to try to get rid of any kind of skepticism, 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.  To me that defiles science."

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.

As I've had the opportunity to explain to him before, we don't have to like each other to have a constructive dialogue.
If he were only up to it. 
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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.
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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.
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