Rex Murphy's gaffe today

Rex Murphy's column in the Globe today, "So where's that global cooling alert?" was composed a bit hastily. He should have done a little research on global temperatures first.

Mr. Murphy failed to check measurements of global temperature before writing that, "things have gotten cool" and complaining that no meteorologists have spoken up about how solid the "theory of global warming" can be given that Toronto seems to be "having a Newfoundland summer".

Let's look at the actual measurements. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center has data showing that this past June had the second highest globally averaged land and sea temperature ever recorded. How can that be given that those of us in the middle of North America have been experiencing a cool wet summer? Well, It turns out that other parts of the world - the north and eastern Pacific, north-western Atlantic, Africa, Southern Europe, and Siberia were much warmer than normal. Averaged over the globe, the relatively cooler interior of North America got canceled out and then some.

There has been no global cooling alert this summer because there hasn't been
any global cooling.

Cool here but globally the second warmest June ever recorded

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center reports that this past June had the second highest globally averaged land and sea temperature ever recorded. Yet folks in many parts of Canada and the US experienced a cool and wet June.

This figure explains how it happened. It turns out that other parts of the world, the north and eastern Pacific, north-western Atlantic, Africa, Southern Europe, and Siberia were much warmer than normal. Averaged over the globe, the relatively cooler interior of North America got canceled out.

Of particular interest is the warmth of Siberia. That's where one of the feared tipping points could happen: melting permafrost could release large quantities of methane and carbon dioxide and accelerate global warming.

For more, read this post by Joe Romm

Toronto Island, now and 25 years ago

The Globe and Mail's Report on Business 25th anniversary issue this past Saturday contained a two page spread by John Daly comparing photos by photographer Elizabeth Jones of downtown Toronto on May 21, 2009 and May 21, 1984.

Here are the photos:
2009 on top, 1984 below. The article pointed out all the new buildings that have gone up. Toronto sure has changed. But look at Toronto Island. Notice how much greener the trees are compared to the grass in 2009 vs. 1984. Nature has changed too.

These pictures don't prove anything about global warming, but it is interesting to note that the foliage is quite a bit more advanced in 2009 compared to 1984. This colour change is amplified by the fact that it's spring and the colour of trees changes rapidly during May. If it's a couple of degrees warmer, on average, then everything grows something like ten days earlier. Look carefully at nature and you'll be able to pick out the signs of global warming.

And yes, in case you were wondering, according to the National Climate Data and Information Archive, in Toronto, March, April and May 2009 were on average about 3 degrees warmer than those respective months in 1984.

National Post flubs global warming denial attempt

National Post writer, Lorne Gunter, has written a column today following other global warming skeptics in trying to make a mountain out of a molehill about a data entry error. Some September temperature data were copied into October, making a report from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies seem to indicate that October was very warm. In fact, GISS pulled the report after less than a day, got a new report from the source that sent them the erroneous data (about 10% of their data stations were affected), and fixed their report a couple days after that. From a scientific point of view, it's good to have skeptics (good scientists are skeptics, especially of their own work, which is more than I can say for most global warming deniers). The more skeptics do their work, the more solid the scientific conclusions become. That's how science works.

Mr. Gunter seems to think this incident is evidence of bias by researchers at Goddard. He writes, "...unscientific bias at GISS and elsewhere in the global warming community -- has been exposed by this incident." He doesn't think that a quickly identified and corrected programming error or data entry error could have simply been just that.

Now Mr. Gunter, look at your own article:

Look at the fourth paragraph (and the reason I included an image is in case the Post corrects their online article:


"Moreover, sea ice expanded so rapidly it covered 30% more of the Arctic than at the end of October, 2007. (Of course, you saw few stories about that, too, since interest in the Arctic ice cover is reserved for when it's melting.)"

Wait a minute, we're talking about October 2008, not October 2007. Would that be a data entry error on your part, Mr. Gunter?

Elizabeth May's book coming out on Oct. 2

I received a notice from amazon.ca that Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May's book, "Global Warming for Dummies", part of the extensive "... for Dummies" series, is being released in the middle of this federal election campaign on October 2. Coincidentally, it's the same date as the English language party leaders' television debate, one of two debates that were recently the source of so much public outcry when Stephen Harper and Jack Layton tried, unsuccessfully, to exclude her.

Global warming allows Lyme disease to invade Canada

The Kingston Whig Standard carried an article today by reporter Jennifer Pritchett about the spread of Lyme disease across Canada. An aunt of mine in the U.S. has suffered from it for many years. It wasn't treated soon enough or aggressively enough and got into her heart. This nasty disease is carried by the blacklegged, or 'deer' tick. Ticks are bad enough - seeing a creature with its head burrowed into your flesh is a bit distrubing - but those deer ticks are tiny little buggers and really hard to check for. Believe me, I have had to do it for friends.

(Image from the Public Health Agency of Canada website)

Canadians are especially susceptible because they are relatively ignorant about Lyme disease.

The Whig Standard article concludes with a warning from one scientist:

Jim Sutcliffe, a medical entomologist at Trent University, said bird migration has been the source of the ticks moving north into Canada. Global warming is enabling those ticks to survive and reproduce in more northern latitudes.
"The thing that's different is that the climate is changing - it's warming gradually so our summers are getting warmer and our falls are becoming warmer," he said. "The temperatures stay higher for longer throughout the year and that's making southern Canada receptive for the blacklegged tick."

We have to worry about not only greenhouse gas mitigation (reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases) but global warming mitigation. Global warming has already started and we'll have to deal with (pay for) the consequences.

Do you want to pay for a government program to deal with Lyme disease? If so, where would you divert resources from? Would you cut spending elsewhere ? Raise taxes? Borrow from the future?

Green/Carbon tax shifts or Cap and Trade systems are not Tyrannical!

Neil Reynolds wrote in today's Globe and Mail Report on Business (superheading "environment") about the costs of greenhouse gas mitigation ("Obama's Climate Change Solution: Tyranny"). Basically he was presenting and spinning some work put out by the George C. Marshall Institute which he claims is a "science policy think tank". Reynolds is where most of the "climate change deniers" have retreated to right now: saying that it's going to be too expensive to do much about greenhouse gas emissions. Only he's putting a new little twist, saying that it's going to be too costly in terms of freedom and democracy for governments to do anything but let technology and the market try to solve the problem.

Whoa!!

1) The well-known climate-change denier and tobacco and oil industry lobbyist, Frederick Seitz, helped found the George C. Marshall Institute. The Marshall Institute's work was, apparently, even too much for Exxon, who cut their funding last month, and explained that "In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner."

2) Reynold's doesn't seem to understand that technology plus a market economy that had a crucial price - the price of pollution (zero) - wrong, got us to our present dire situation. Two ways to try to solve the problem are the carbon tax, which puts a proper price on pollution and lets the market take over, and a cap and trade system, which is also a market solution to a pollution problem. These are the farthest you could get from tyrannical solutions to the greenhouse gas problem.

Tyranny, in my view, is leaving the price of pollution at zero. The subjects of our tyranny are those that will live, could have lived, or could have lived more productively in the future.

Letter to the Editor of the Toronto Sun

Re: Peter Worthington's column, "Weather Watch", April 25, 2007

Freeman Dyson has indeed said that climate models can't be trusted to predict the effects of global warming. While Mr. Dyson is not a climate researcher, I'll concede that there's uncertainty in the models. But that uncertainty can work both ways. Consider the news today that Artic sea ice has been measured to be melting three times faster than average prediction of 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Instead of doubting global warming we should be cautious and conservative by putting the burden of proof on those who say that it's okay to continue "business as usual".