At his Die Welt blog, journalist Ulli Kulke has a commentary on the recent scientific study issued by the NOAA and its latest findings concerning the US drought last year, which now states that it was due to just plain bad, natural weather and was not man-made.
Kulke calls the findings embarrassing for President Obama, who now likes to “blame such single meteorological events on man-made climate change”.
Kulke writes that the tragic drought in the US states had no connection with climate change, at least nothing of significance. Even more embarrassing: “The study had been written by scientists of the US government and was made public on Thursday by five different government institutes.” The NOAA report concluded:
The Central Great Plains drought during May-August of 2012 resulted mostly from natural variations in weather.”
Kulke adds concerning the lack of southerly winds from the Gulf and lack of midwestern thunderstorms, which led to the drought (my emphasis):
The study’s authors trace both phenomena back to the jet stream – an upper altitude strong wind that blows from west to east around the northern hemisphere and influences weather events – has been a little more to the north lately (by the way: sober meteorologists also blamed a shift in the jet stream for the drought in Russia three years ago and for the catastrophic floods in Pakistan). No climate model ever predicted such a situation.”
Let’s be very clear on that, as some scientists are now scrambling to connect jet stream variation to man-made climate change using “model simulations”.
Kulke tells German readers that the study found no relationship between a man-made climate change and an increase in extreme weather events, even if such events are always gladly postulated. Kulke reminds us: “Also the IPCC has not been able to find such a relationship. President Obama should have learned something from that.”
The NOAA report of course is not only an embarrassment for the president, but also for scientists, like Kevin Trenberth, who is employed by the NOAA, and who now requests studying to see if the jet stream shift is perhaps connected to climate change. Kulke sarcastically states that for Trenberth today, “There can be no large meteorological event that is not influenced by man.”
Kulke reminds German readers that Trenberth is the scientist who in a Climategate e-mail wrote of another major dilemma that has long dogged climate science: the lack of warming, “We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
Kulke concludes: “Even if someone does manage to slap together a relationship between the jet stream and climate change, it’s still not going to help Trenberth at all to get out of his dilemma.”
Photo of Kulke: www.achgut.com.
I can account for the lack of warming, it is caused by the fact that the surface tension which naturally exists on the surface of water blocks physical heat. In short you cannot “heat” water from above. You can radiate energy into water but physical heat is blocked. If you doubt my proposition try heating water from above using a heat gun, you will find that the heat is totally blocked.
Because of surface tension physical heat cannot be transmitted from the atmosphere into the ocean. It follows that there is no ability for the “excess” heat from co2 to increase the rate of evaporation nor can the heat be absorbed and stored. That’s why Trenberth has a problem and its why the scientific community has a problem.
The only energy to enter the ocean is via the sun’s rays and when the sun goes quiet as it has done in the last 15yrs there is no backup and the earth gets cold. Sound familiar. In short, because of surface tension, there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming.
Dear Mr. Barclay,
As an educated opponent of AGW, please do not involve yourself in ANY argument again. You make us look woefully ignorant. Take a few moments and study the three methods of heat transfer and re-think your statement. I, for one, am incredibly grateful that heat can “heat from above”; otherwise, we are all screwed.
Trenberth isn’t so much complaining about the lack of warming as about our ability to account for it. He publicly stated as much in a 2009 issue (volume 1:19-27) of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability: “…no, we do not [have an adequate explanation for where the warming has gone]. But we should!”