posted February 12, 2014 09:09 PM            

The answer is very simple. Nothing.

If you heard anyone suggest otherwise — whether they said that the extreme cold implies that there is no global warming going on, or they said that the extreme cold implies that global warming is happening — you should seriously question anything that person says when it comes to climate change. Because that person does not respect (or perhaps even understand) the difference between anecdote and evidence; between weather and climate; between a large fluctuation and a small but long-term trend. Or between media hoopla and science.

In the interest of an imperfect analogy: Let me ask you this. Are you generally happier, or less happy, than you were five years ago? Answer this as best you can.

Now let me ask you another question. Did you, within the last month, have a really, really bad day, or a really, really good one?

Does the answer to the second question have much to do with the answer to the first one?

Barring an exceptional recent disaster in your personal or professional life, the fact that, say, last Thursday your car broke down, you locked yourself out of your house, your dog vomited on the carpet and you got caught in the rain without your umbrella does not have anything to do with whether you are a happier person than you were five years ago. Being a happier person has more to do with whether you have a better job, a happier family, a better sense of self-esteem, and things like that. And even if you love your job, you know there are going to be really bad days in the office sometimes. That’s just the way it goes. We all know that.

It’s the same with daily and monthly and yearly fluctuations in the stock market compared to the slow but fairly steady century-long growth of the U.S. economy (both curves corrected for inflation.)

So why, when there’s a big fluctuation in the daily, monthly or even seasonal weather, do people jump up and down about what the implications are for the long-term trends in climate?

Any one fluctuation, whether hot or cold, dry or wet, windy or calm, is by itself irrelevant. Weather fluctuates; that’s just how it is. It’s by no means unusual, now or in the distant past, for temperatures in the central United States to swing by 50ºF (28ºC) in just a few hours. Here’s a fun story by the Weather Channel listing a few extreme temperature swings, all of which were more dramatic than the recent cold spell. Weather in the U.S. has seen extremes since before Europeans arrived here and started recording their experiences, and it will continue to do so whether global warming persists or not.

Moreover, the recent cold wasn’t as exceptional as portrayed in the press, or as it seemed to people under the age of 40. One of the reasons that so many records were set this past week was that January 7th, over the past century, hasn’t previously seen an exceptionally cold day in the southeast. Specifically, let’s look at Greensboro, North Carolina, which was described in the press as follows:

“Greensboro, N.C., also witnessed a major drop in its record low temperature, going from a previous record of 14 degrees to 5 degrees. “
Well, what were (before this year) the record temps in that town during the first 10 days of January? (see http://www.erh.noaa.gov/rah/climate/data/gso.daily.records.temp.precip.html)

Jan 1: 8
Jan 2: 5
Jan 3: 7
Jan 4: 3
Jan 5: 3
Jan 6: 5
Jan 7: 14 ==> 5 in 2014
Jan 8: 6
Jan 9: 2
Jan 10: 1
Jan 11: -5

In other words, the previous century or so of January 7ths were unusual — every other day in early January had already seen a very cold day! All this recent cold snap did was bring it into line with other cold early January days! A similar story held true in Atlanta. In short, despite the “record cold” media hype, quite a few of the new “records” weren’t especially exceptional for January… they were “normal” records, not worthy of the amazement expressed by reporters and citizens alike.

The issue this highlights is that if you want to tell whether the climate is getting warmer, the record high and low temperatures on a given day aren’t going to tell you much! The record temperatures fluctuate and are subject to random, extraordinary events. We don’t know how rare those exceptional events are, and the more wild and spectacular they are, the less we know about them. If something happens once every one, three or ten centuries, but we only have one century of records, we’ve only seen it happen once or perhaps twice, if ever. So when it happens, we can’t say “aha, that’s something that would not have happened if it weren’t for climate change”. We can’t draw such a conclusion, anymore than we can conclude that your stunningly bad day at work last week implies that your job, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t going to be as fulfilling in future as it used to be.

Take a look at this plot, from the website Weather Underground, which tells us something about the weather and climate in San Antonio, Texas.

Data and Plot From Weather Underground: Average (blue) and record (violet) high and low temperatures for each day in the year in San Antonio, with data taken over many years.

It shows, for each day of the year, over many years, the average high and average low temperatures in blue, and the record daily highs and lows in red. [Unfortunately I do not know exactly how many years are included in this data; I would estimate 60 years, but Weather Underground does not provide this important information --- and they should.] Of course the average and record highs and lows all trend higher in the summer and lower in the winter, as expected. But notice:

the average highs and lows are smooth curves
the record highs and lows are jagged curves
Why is that?

Because for each day, every year contributes to the average. Year-to-year fluctuations for each day get smoothed out, as do day-to-day fluctuations in each year. So the curve showing the average is smooth as you move from one day to the next.

By contrast, only special, unique, remarkable, extraordinary days contribute to the record high and record low on a particular day. These are subject to large day-to-day fluctuations, because something extraordinary may have happened on January 9th of some 20th century year, but not on January 10th or 8th.

So a specific event with record heat or record cold isn’t useful for telling us about climate change. Though impressive, it just represents the vagaries of life that get in the way of us understanding the real long-term trend, just as a truly bad day can make someone forget, for a short while anyway, that his or her life is going pretty well on the whole.

It’s the same with extreme hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and floods. These are too rare, and require too many elements to come together in a unique mix, for us to easily conclude anything about them. Hurricanes Irene and Sandy were a big deal in and around New York City; but are they signs of global warming?! What about the devastating 1938 hurricane that hit eastern New England? What about the two strong hurricanes that struck New England, a month apart, in 1869? It’s impossible to conclude that Irene and Sandy are related to global warming/weirding. Only if you see something steady over decades — the average storm becoming stronger, or the average number of storms rising — or a dramatic trend — Irene and Sandy-like storms ceasing to be rare and becoming once-every-other-year events over decades — will you be able to draw any conclusions from hurricanes that the climate has really changed.

No… if you want to determine whether global warming is occurring, you must set aside the record high or low temperatures, the extreme storms, the exceptional events… the ones that the media reports, and the ones that you yourself easily remember. Instead, you need to look at the averages — which is where the data is sufficient, and sufficiently stable, for some conclusion that the Earth has slightly warmed (by just 1 – 2 ºF = 0.5 – 1.1ºC –which is still enough to melt a lot of glaciers) to be drawn. And even our current 100 years of data from around the globe is just barely enough to make that possible. I’ll cover that issue another time.

posted February 12, 2014 09:14 PM            

In fact, it's not.

"This is not anything that I would deem to be unusual or extraordinary," said Mark Wysocki, the New York state climatologist.

"The type of winter that we are currently experiencing we have experienced in the past, when you take a look at records across the Midwest and Northeast," he continued.

William Schmitz, the service climatologist and a meteorologist at the Southeast Regional Climate Center, agreed.

"It's cold," Schmitz said. "But just like the Northeast, it wasn't all-time record-breaking."

While cold records may be set for individual days -- Monday in Chicago, for example, was the coldest Jan. 6 yet observed, with a low of minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit -- temperatures are not reaching record winter lows and in many cases are far from it.

In Chicago, on Jan. 16, 2009, the town reached minus 18 F, part of another winter cold snap. On Jan. 20 of 1985, the city saw a low of minus 27 F.

In the Twin Cities, the record winter low is minus 32 F. The cities reached minus 22 F, a full 10 degrees above the record, in this cold event, said Pete Boulay, a climatologist at the Minnesota State Climatology Office.

Scott Unger, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Nashville, Tenn., said the last time that city got down to the single digits was 2009.

It's 'been quite a while'
"Arctic blasts like this are not completely uncommon, but it has been quite a while since this happened here," said Unger. "Last night we came in at a 2, and our yesterday's high was 20."

Atlanta and other Southeastern cities saw similarly chilly temperatures, with the expected high for yesterday reaching 24 F.

But a cold snap the city experienced in February 1996 was worse, with daily highs reaching only 18 degrees, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Willis.

In the 1980s, Willis said, cold periods like this were much more usual. In the recent past, they have become less frequent. This is perhaps why the cold seems out of the ordinary.

New York climatologist Wysocki said that since the last couple of winters have been fairly mild, this one, which he called "typical," might seem worse in contrast.

"I'm sure if people sat down and really thought about it, they'd think, 'I've experienced this weather before, and this is nothing new. It's just been a while since I've had it, that's all,'" he said.

One of the reasons this winter has such fluctuations between hot and cold, without a clear signal dominating, is that there is not an El Niño or La Niña in the Pacific Ocean. Such climate phenomena will often set the tone for a winter, pushing a certain pattern, like snow or cold temperatures, to dominate in different parts of North America, said Wysocki.

"We don't have a strong [Pacific Ocean] signal, which means all bets are off for this winter. It's just going to be an average winter," he said.

As for the dreaded "polar vortex," which is responsible for the cold sweeping through much of the country? It's there every winter but moves around -- sometimes it's nearer Canada and the United States, other times closer to Asia and Europe, Wysocki said.

'Polar vortex,' an old acquaintance
In this case, a portion of the vortex spilled down in the United States, bringing cold air and winds with it.

"It's a fancy word for saying an intense low pressure that is spinning around up in the Arctic. And we like to call it a vortex, because it spins. But it makes it sound evil," Wysocki said, laughing.

Even though the cold temperatures are not record-breaking, they are still very cold, and wind chills across the region have been bitter, leading to wind chill advisories in many areas.

Schools were closed across much of the area affected by the cold snap, including in the Twin Cities on Monday, and there were closures and delays yesterday in much of the Southeast as the weather moved south.

As is typical when cold weather strikes, climate skeptics, including Donald Trump, pounced on the weather as proof that global warming is not happening.

Groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists responded with fact sheets explaining the difference between climate and weather.

A number of media outlets tried to link this recent cold outbreak with a wavier jet stream that is possibly caused by the reduction in temperature difference between a much warmer Arctic, which is heating up rapidly due to global warming, and the lower parts of the world.

However, the science behind the link between warming in the Arctic and wackier weather in the midlatitude regions like the United States, Europe and much of Asia is far from proven.

Weather weirding? Wait till summer
Research so far has shown that if there is any connection at all, it is likely to be a small one (ClimateWire, Sept. 4, 2013).

Martin Hoerling, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory who researches the connections between climate change and weather extremes, said a link between a warmer Arctic and the recent cold is unlikely.

"If there were a link, it would be more likely to occur in fall [when the Arctic sea ice is at a low and the region is warm] than it would in January [when the Arctic is ice-covered and cold], so from that point of view, it's not a compelling candidate at this time of year," Hoerling said.

Hoerling also addressed the idea of weather weirding, that climate change is causing the weather to behave more erratically. Scientists analyzing temperature fluctuations in the United States have been unable to find any increase in temperature variability, he said.

"The weather is not getting weirder in our neck of the woods, as best as we can tell," he said. One area where a climate change signal is apparent, said Hoerling, is in extreme high temperatures.

"If you take the whole U.S., the indications are that there is an increasing frequency of record high temperatures versus record daily low temperatures," he said. In 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on weather extremes and climate change (ClimateWire, Nov. 18, 2011).

In that report, researchers reported high confidence in exactly what Hoerling said the data showed -- an increase in extreme temperatures.

And as University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass pointed out in a recent blog post about the cold snap, data from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center do not suggest that cold waves are increasing.

posted February 12, 2014 09:24 PM            

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson posted a January 28 Investor’s Business Daily Op-Ed piece titled “Beyond Vortex Lies a Lesson for Denialists”. His thesis was that recent cold waves bringing subzero and single-digit temperatures too much of the nation provide an excuse for global warming skeptics (us “denialists”) to claim that “it’s really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” He emphasizes that we skeptics “forget that it’s winter, and apparently they [we] don’t quite grasp that even when it’s cold in one part of the world, it can be hot in another.”

Frankly, while my fellow skeptics may seriously doubt that any evidence of a human-caused, or even nature-caused climate crisis exists, I don’t know of any who disagree with Robinson about not concluding much of anything about “climate change” based upon conditions occurring over a few days, weeks, months or even years of unseasonably cold (or warm) weather over part or most of the world. After all, “climate” is a term typically applied to cycles lasting at least 30 years which depend a lot upon when you start measuring.

Polar Vortex (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
There is certainly no dispute regarding the fact that climate changes, and does so for many reasons. In fact the past century has witnessed two distinct periods of warming and cooling. The first warming occurred between 1900 and 1945. Since CO2 levels were relatively low then compared with now, and didn’t change much, they couldn’t have been the cause before 1950.

The second warming shift began in 1975 and rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, a strong Pacific Ocean El Niño year…although this later warming is reported only by surface thermometers, not satellites, and is legitimately disputed by some. (There’s some background on this in my June 18 column.)

Incidentally, about half of all estimated warming since 1900 occurred before the mid-1940s despite continuously rising CO2 levels since that time. As for continued warming (up until a recent 17-year “pause”), we have been witnessing a pretty constant trend of temperature increases ever since the last “Little Ice Age” (not a true Ice Age) ended in about 1850.

Eugene Robinson cited a January 2 article in the journal Nature arguing that human-generated carbon emissions will lead to even greater warming than was previously anticipated. This will allegedly result from the impact of warming on cloud cover causing average global temperatures to possibly rise a full 7° F by the end of the century.

The study’s lead author, Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, told the Guardian newspaper that this: “would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous” and “would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much the tropics.”

Some other January articles posted in Nature might be noted as well. For example, an unsigned editorial in the January 16 issue titled “Cool Heads Needed”, warns that unusual cold weather doesn’t prove or disprove the theory of that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming that “climate skeptics” have “celebrated”. It also theorizes that “global warming might in fact be contributing to the string of abnormally cold U.S. winters in recent years”, yet also observes that “the average global temperature… has plateaued since 1998.”

The editorial admits that: “plenty of questions remain … Exactly how sensitive is Earth’s climate system to increasing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases?” It finally concludes that “if the past is any indication, we may have to live with a fair degree of uncertainty.”

Another Nature journal article of the same date titled “The Case of the Missing Heat” by Jeff Tollefson reviews research on why “the warming stalled” in 1998. He reports “the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field.”

Tollefson then claims that: “climate skeptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that the heat must be building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere.”

Then his wrenching dilemma: “Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their [climate] models.”

Something amiss in their models…is that truly possible? Golly, I thought only radical “skeptics” entertained that rash possibility!

And by the way, there are also some really smart climate scientists who believe that the global climate warming “pause” we have been experiencing since the time most of today’s high school students were born will not only continue, but now introduces a much longer-term cooling cycle. As I discussed in my January 21 column, Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov who heads Russia’s prestigious Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg predicts that: “after the maximum of solar Cycle-24, from approximately 2014, we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11 years” (the 19th to occur in the past 7,500 years).

Abdussamatov and others primarily link their cooling predictions to a 100-year record low number of sunspots. Periods of reduced sunspot activity correlate with increased cloud-forming influences of cosmic rays. More clouds tend to make conditions cooler, while fewer often cause warming. He points out that Earth has experienced such occurrences five times over the last 1,000 years, and that: “A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect.”

But back to that “polar vortex” thing. As Eugene Robinson and other members of the Four-Alarm Fire Brigade insist, with the planet obviously in flames, those numbing temperatures over much of the country (the ones we “skeptics/denialists” are so eager to flaunt) must be an anomaly…a rare exception… certainly not something that can be correlated with any natural climate change that would suggest a possible cooling trend. Giving it a special, exotic-sounding name is a great way to distinguish this from a common old run-of-the-mill weather phenomenon.

Actually however, it’s really not such a new name after all. And the warministas are right that it apparently has nothing to do with global warming, with human fossil-burning carbon emissions, or with flatulent cattle and kangaroos either for that matter.

Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer provides a good thumbnail sketch of the physics involved in an interview posted on Marc Morano’s Climate Depot website. Emphasizing that polar vortices have been around forever, he explains: “The poles have little sunshine even in summer, but especially in winter, like now in the Arctic. So the air over the poles rapidly gets bitterly cold because of radiation to dark space, with negligible replenishment of heat from sunlight.”

Dr. Happer continues: “The sinking cold air is replaced by warmer air flowing in from the south at high altitudes. Since the Earth is rotating, the air flowing in from the south has to start rotating faster to the west, just like a figure skater rotates faster if she pulls in her arms. This forms the polar vortex. The extremely cold air at the bottom of the vortex can be carried south by meanders of the jet stream at the ends of the vortex.”

Happer concludes that “we will have to live with polar vortices as long as the sun shines and the Earth rotates.”

My meteorologist friend Joe Bastardi notes two fairly recent examples when Arctic polar vortices dropped blasts of very cold air into the U.S. One occurred during January 1977, and the other came along at the time of President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in January 1985…when Chicago’s temperatures then reached a record low of 28°F below zero.

As a matter of fact, a polar vortex back in 1777 can potentially be credited with influencing the course of American history. That was just before the Battle of Princeton when Cornwallis’s men marched south of New York City in an attempt to trap George Washington’s small Continental Army in Trenton. Fortunately for the home team, a vortex swept across New Jersey which enabled Washington to avoid encirclement by evacuating his troops and artillery over frozen roads. Upon reaching Princeton, they successfully attacked the British garrison.

posted February 12, 2014 10:01 PM            

An analysis by meteorologist Guido Guidi at the Italian Climate Monitor site debunks claims that the US record cold was caused by man-made global warming. The analysis shows there has been no overall trend in the jet stream zonal velocity over the past 66 years, which in turn controls the polar vortex. At least 3 published papers confirm this conclusion.

The analysis also finds the jet stream/polar vortex is correlated to the natural 60-year climate cycle and solar activity, which is also confirmed by peer-reviewed papers and may represent another solar amplification mechanism.

Google translation + light editing, excerpt:

We summarize the claims of global warming promoters as: For the bitter cold in the United States, from the "Polar Vortex", you can thank global warming, because the temperature increase, faster and more intense at polar latitudes (just north of the other) reducing the temperature differential along latitudes is slow and deflects the jet stream, which is a stream of strong winds aloft that separate the polar air from the middle latitudes. This slowdown and deviation may favor the persistence and intensity of events such as those of these days.

Well, the air movement from west to east, that is, along the latitude, is defined technically as zonal flow. The polar jet is its engine, and the track, and flows at about 9,000 meters above sea level in the area of ​​contact between cold polar air and the temperate mid-latitudes. An area whose position oscillates also important in the short and medium time scale, for instance days or weeks, but that fluctuates much less if one analyzes over longer periods. Similarly, of course, varies the intensity of this stream, which, however, always in the long period, being generated neither more nor less than from differences in mass and temperatures, is much less variable. Unless, as writes Holthaus, there is half of the global warming.

...Before going, however, note with joy that the average generic catastrophism has decided to use a climate skeptic thesis, namely that an increase in temperature decreases the latitudinal gradient. Since all the weather events are generated by a gradient, namely, a temperature difference, a decrease should NOT increase intense events connected to it. But let's get to the point. The one below is a chart that I asked him to prepare a Colarieti Carlo Tosti, the signature of our winter outlook ( here the last ). It is the zonal velocity (ie flow west-east) to the latitude and the altitude where it usually blows the polar jet over the whole circumference of the globe. The whole calculated for the entire period of data available on NOAA reanalysis, ie from 1948 to the present day. Data was superimposed on a curve that describes the trend, the period is about 60 years.

Zonal flow over past 66 years shows the natural 60-year climate oscillation, with total absence of a long term trend.

What we see now is:
a strong interannual variability;
a total absence of trend;
the minimum speed in the vicinity of vintages historically cold;
the maximum speed in the historically warm years;
speed lower on average in cold weather
higher average speed during warm periods, always from the same dataset.
period of about 60 years (also found in many other datasets of atmospheric parameters, including temperatures [and ocean oscillations]) coincident with that of the solar activity.

All considerations that you might look into. But Holthaus has chosen to focus on just what the data is not there, in fact, the opposite of what is there, that is, a tendency to slow down the jet in coincidence of rising temperatures, which for those who do not remember going from mid-70s to late 90s, after global warming has gone into hibernation. And yes that would be enough to take a look at these data in order to understand, for example, that in this year 'freeze' for the U.S., the zonal velocity stationed in the upper part of the statistical distribution, ie, the jet is strong and strong, not slowed down and then forced to go for a walk in America as he says.

This is an example, like many other similar pieces of literature of how poor assurgendo resist the role of 'established facts', simply because the contents continue to be cited by the professionals of the impending catastrophe.

The study from which Holthaus and many others who populated the social media these days is was published in GRL released a couple of years ago:

Evidence linking linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes

And the evidence was removed just a year after getting published in GRL:

Revisiting the evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in midlatitudes

An excerpt of the abstract:

We analyze the trends in three reanalysis of atmospheric waves on the southern extension of North America and the North Atlantic, and it is shown that the positive trends reported above are probably an artifact of methodology. You do not find any significant reduction in the phase velocity of the planetary waves except inottobre-November-December, but this trend is sensitive to the parameters of analysis. In addition, the frequency of occurrence of blocks shows no significant increase in any season, claiming ultriormente the absence of trends in speed and southern extension of the waves.

posted February 12, 2014 10:08 PM            

New paper finds nothing unusual or unprecedented about the North Atlantic jet stream
A paper published today in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society finds no evidence of any unusual or unprecedented changes in the latitude or speed of the North Atlantic jet stream since 1871. According to the authors, "When viewed in this longer term context the variations of recent decades do not appear unusual, and recent values of jet latitude and speed are not unprecedented in the historical record." The paper debunks claims by climate alarmists that the jet stream has changed due to alleged anthropogenic global warming, as well as claims that jet stream dips are caused by global warming or global cooling.

Twentieth century North Atlantic jet variability

Tim Woollings, Camelia Czuchnickia, Christian Franzkeb

Abstract: Long records of the latitude and speed of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet stream since 1871 are presented from the newly available Twentieth Century reanalysis. These jet variations underlie the variability associated with patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and have considerable societal impact through variations in the prevailing westerly winds. While the NAO combines variations in the latitude and speed of the jet, these two characteristics are shown to have quite different seasonal cycles and interannual variability, suggesting that they may have different dynamical influences.

posted February 12, 2014 10:37 PM            

What is a polar vortex?

A polar vortex is a persistent cyclone located near the geographical poles of a planet. In our solar system, they are known to exist on Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan. On Earth, they are located in the upper troposphere and the stratosphere layers of the atmosphere. Their strength is derived from the temperature differential between the warm temperatures at the equator and the cold temperatures at the poles, making them strengthen in winter and weaken in summer. (Saturn has the only polar vortices in the solar system which are formed with polar temperatures higher than equatorial temperatures.) The vortex that normally stays near the North Pole spins in a counter-clockwise direction due to the Coriolis effect.

What happened over the past several days?

While the vortex in question typically stays near the North Pole, it can occasionally split in two and dip into the sub-Arctic, as has happened recently. This led to colder than normal temperatures in the eastern United States as well as in Siberia.

How severe was this event?

Not very, by historical standards. In fact, there were no all-time low temperature records recorded anywhere in the United States as a result of this polar vortex event.

Where can this happen again in the future?

This can occur anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. North America, Europe, and Asia can be affected by dips of the polar vortex. A similar dip was responsible for cold weather in Europe in March 2013.

Are polar vortices related to climate change?

posted February 13, 2014 11:47 AM            

Note that while the paper appears in Google Scholar, it was published by the George C. Marshall Institute and not by any peer-reviewed journal. http://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer

"I am not a climatologist, but I don’t think any of the other witnesses are either. I do work in the related field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases – one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change. I have come here today as a concerned citizen to express my personal views, and those of many like me, about US climate-change policy. These are not official views of my main employer, Princeton University, nor of any other organization with which I am associated. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/happer_senate_testimony.html

So he's just a physicist like Dr. Mueller, only you find his belief in his own authority superior to those that would contradict him on scientific grounds (which has been done on many occasions)?

quote:

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http://profmattstrassler.com/2014/01/13/polar-vortex-climate-change-red-herring/

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Climate Change in Climate Change
Posted on October 24, 2011 | 13 Comments

The most important thing that happened this week in Berkeley, California was definitely not the news of a small and probably ephemeral excess of multi-lepton events at the Large Hadron Collider‘s CMS experiment — and probably not even the disconcerting earthquakes on (near?) the strained Hayward fault — it was the (public but not yet peer-reviewed) report from the Berkeley Earth Team, a group of mostly non-climate scientists [mostly from physics] who went back to analyze and check the data that climate scientists have been studying for years. Go look at their website; it’s for you.

My understanding is that the scientific director, Richard Muller, organized the team because he was highly skeptical that climate scientists were treating their data properly. His agenda seems to have been largely scientific rather than political. Though I did not share his point of view, I found it understandable. In my field we have often seen data mis-analyzed, even though high-energy physics is a largely apolitical domain. It is not easy, even with full scientific integrity, to avoid all sources of bias. With something that has enormous policy implications, such as climate change, there was some concern among serious scientists that error and/or group-think bias could set in within even a large community. The idea of having a largely independent review by scientifically experienced non-experts was a good one.

Well, in science, when you see vocal skeptics starting to come around to the point of view of those they previously criticized, you know the climate is changing.

I doubt we’ll ever have a more independent review than the Berkeley Earth Team has just given us. I don’t know all the scientists on the team, but I am confident at least that Saul Perlmutter (who just won the Nobel Prize) is of the highest integrity. The team included only scientists who had not taken a public position on climate change, and their funding sources are very broad-based. Moreover, unlike climate scientists, who could be subjected to the accusation of letting a vested interest in obtaining funding bias their science toward a prevailing viewpoint, some members of this team had to give up time from their own personal research, thereby reducing their funding opportunities, in order to participate in this endeavor. None of them has much obviously to gain — no probability of scientific recognition, prizes, funding, or even thanks — especially Muller, who in confirming what he expected the team would likely refute has burned plenty of bridges in the interest of honesty.

I’m definitely not qualified to comment on the details of climate science, and I haven’t read the report. All I have to go on right now is the two-page summary of the results reported here:
http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_Summary_20_Oct

which I highly recommend you personally read. It has subtleties and details that the press is not capturing.

Nevertheless, it seems to me at this early stage that the report’s main result — that where it has so far come to conclusions, it agrees with what many climate scientists have long been saying — represents a success story for science, one worth noting. It confirms yet again that preconceptions and funding sources do not automatically determine scientific results. And it confirms also that it is possible, over time, to obtain consensus about nature — that even while the US Congress witnesses ideology placed before the nation’s best interest, the collective scientific process still manages to put the integrity of science first, and a scientist’s pride second. http://profmattstrassler.com/2011/10/24/climate-change-in-climate-change/
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It's one thing for me to tell you about Mueller. It's another thing altogether for a physicist that YOU post to tell you about Mueller (and make some conclusions that disagree with yours regarding the money motivation).

Further proof of his powers of reason:

My own view? Our uncontrolled experiments on our one and only planet must be curbed. Scientific evidence from many quarters show definitively that the Earth is warming. Science can give us arguments, strong but not airtight, that we may be responsible (mainly via carbon emissions, and the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide). It cannot tell us reliably how bad the risks of a warmer Earth will be; there are too many uncertainties. But it seems to me that these are risks we shouldn’t be taking, period. We don’t get to mail-order another planet if we mess this one up. http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/08/02/change-of-climate-on-the-right/

posted February 13, 2014 12:08 PM            

quote:

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Martin Hoerling, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory who researches the connections between climate change and weather extremes, said a link between a warmer Arctic and the recent cold is unlikely.

"If there were a link, it would be more likely to occur in fall [when the Arctic sea ice is at a low and the region is warm] than it would in January [when the Arctic is ice-covered and cold], so from that point of view, it's not a compelling candidate at this time of year," Hoerling said.

Hoerling also addressed the idea of weather weirding, that climate change is causing the weather to behave more erratically. Scientists analyzing temperature fluctuations in the United States have been unable to find any increase in temperature variability, he said.

"The weather is not getting weirder in our neck of the woods, as best as we can tell," he said. One area where a climate change signal is apparent, said Hoerling, is in extreme high temperatures.

"If you take the whole U.S., the indications are that there is an increasing frequency of record high temperatures versus record daily low temperatures," he said. In 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on weather extremes and climate change (ClimateWire, Nov. 18, 2011).

In that report, researchers reported high confidence in exactly what Hoerling said the data showed -- an increase in extreme temperatures.

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posted February 13, 2014 12:15 PM            

quote:

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Judith Curry sums it up well. The polar vortex is not caused by global warming; neither does it disprove it.

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posted February 13, 2014 01:48 PM            

I think he's the guy you posted before, which I watched in a video. He seemed very rational, not wanting people to take more from the data than was really there. I'll look it up.

Yup: http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum26/HTML/002407.html

And Jwhop doesn't think I have a good memory.

I said at that time:
He didn't come across as an "alarmist" to me. He came across as a diligent proponent of rationally assessing the available information. I was pleasantly surprised my his mentions of people's psychological anchoring. Here's not just a man that wants to follow the information strictly, but is also aware of the cognitive failures people have in assessing the climate.

posted February 14, 2014 12:27 PM            

Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies in November 2013

Majorities of Democrats and Republicans support several climate and energy policies. For example:

• Providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels (82% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans support this).
  
• Funding more research into renewable energy sources (84% and 60% respectively).
  
• Regulating CO2 as a pollutant (85% and 55%).
  
• Eliminating all subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry (67% and 52%).