El Gordo Thread

Allow me to kick this off.

Gordo thinks the climate is going to cool by 1.5 degrees over the next decade.

Evidence provided: none.

As a "journalist" he claims he doesn't have to share sources.

Tim, isn't giving trolls their own named thread a bit like giving the naughtiest boy in school an elephant stamp because he hasn't yet burned down the school? Shouldn't bad behaviour be punished? Severely?

> Shouldn't bad behaviour be punished?

I imagine that over time, unless they start posting more substantively, the attention given to the quarantined ones will diminish significantly - which in the blogosphere is a kind of punishment - or at least strong evaluative feedback ;-)

Wow Gordo. Wait til the gang hears you've achieved guest blogger status on Deltoid. You are so busted.

About time too. Thanks Tim, a grateful audience salutes you.

I tend to agree with [David Horton](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/el_gordo_thread.php#comment-251…) - that it would be less rewarding for them if all the rowdies were to be exciled to a generic, non-eponymous cesspool and there to fester - but hey, I can't resist this one post on this particular thread.

Fatso, have a nice life. I will fondly remember today as the last day that [I never have to involuntarily read your nonsense again](http://www.911homeforeclosure.net/images/end.gif).

Thanks, I really don't deserve it.

When William P. Pattersona et al. analyzed mollusks recovered from near-shore marine cores in northwest Iceland they saw significant variation in seasonal temperature over the period from â¼360 B.C. to â¼A.D. 1660.

'Because δ18O values record subseasonal temperature variation over the lifetime of the bivalves, these data provide the first 2,000-year secular record of North Atlantic seasonality from ca. 360 cal yr B.C. to cal yr A.D. 1660. Notable cold periods (360 B.C. to 240 B.C.; A.D. 410; and A.D. 1380 to 1420) and warm periods (230 B.C. to A.D. 140 and A.D. 640 to 760)'

Mollusks don't lie, the Roman Climate Optimum was real in Iceland.

Gordo,

Since marine bivalves live in seawater, how do you account for the effect of ocean current shifts bringing colder water to the mollusk's habitat, compared to, for example, an overall temperature rise or drop in the north Atlantic as a whole?

Surely el gordo has been banished to his own thread because warmist have no response to his [commitment to accurate good process](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/open_thread_48.php#comment-2511…)?

Thanks, I really don't deserve it.

Oh but you do!

MFS

Quite possible, I'll have a look.

El Gordo,

My point is that either a warming or a cooling in the northern hemisphere is likely to have an effect on the dominant westerlies in the temperate latitudes, and the trade winds in the subtropics, shifting them poleward (from warming) or equatorward (from cooling). If either of these have an effect on the Gulf stream, its warm water flow could shift either to the north or south of its current location, both scearios leaving NW Iceland cooler than it currently is...

This is of course mere speculation, but it highlights the fallacy of assuming that changes in an area like Greenland or Iceland, the climate of which is so strongly affected by marine currents, reflects a global warming or cooling event.

The currents are complex around Iceland, so I will have to look elsewhere for proof of Roman warming.

http://www.fisheries.is/ecosystem/oceanography/ocean-currents/

I think Alphonse wins an internet.

This sort of thread has worked very well in the past, so I'm sure it will be fine this time.

Who else has had their own thread? There was Girma and Tim Curtin, any others? Regardless, you're certainly in good company, O Corpulent One.

Can you answer me one question please Gordo: have you formulated your idea that there will be at least 1.5C cooling over the next decade solely on David Archibald's incredibly flawed paper?

el Gordo
>Quite possible, I'll have a look.

How hilarious.

The whole denialist tragedy caught in that little response. el Gordo and his ilk seem to think that without actually being involved in any research themselves they'll somehow be able to discover a flaw that thousands of scientists have overlooked.

Positive Weather Solutions are predicting record breaking temperatures in the UK this summer: âWhen we look back upon Summer 2010, it will register as a warmer than average Summer, possibly featuring in the top five warmest Summer's on record.â That will get you 6/1 with William Hill.

Piers Corbyn, on the other hand, thinks it will be cool and dull.

We are half way through May and so far it has been the coldest on record, but it's generally agreed it will get warmer soon and average out.

Predicting seasonal weather correctly will help us understand the real mechanisms involved in climate change.

>We are half way through May and so far it has been the coldest on record, but it's generally agreed it will get warmer soon and average out.

Correction, if the temperature stayed the same for the rest of the month (8.5C), it would be the coldest on record. However, there have been several months with a colder running CET to the 15th. Since 1900, they are*:

Year CET

1902 6.74

1941 7.56

1996 7.56

1926 8.15

1910 8.31

1951 8.46

It has been a cold start (2.1C below average), but it's nowhere near the coldest start on record. Also, just look at how cold May 1996 started! I don't recall it personally (well I was only ten) but for the curious here's an example of why it was so cold:

*note these are all the CET to the 15th of May, not the whole month.

> ...seem to think that without actually being involved in any research themselves they'll somehow be able to discover a flaw that thousands of scientists have overlooked.

That's precisely the stance Brent and many denialists have, except when they're intimating that the scientists are lying about their work or making up results, or that we just don't have *enough* certainty yet (and maybe never can if we adhere to their standards).

> Predicting seasonal weather correctly will help us understand the real mechanisms involved in climate change.

More cluelessness.

One can predict long term climate trends more robustly than long term weather because they are **different** parameters of the system.

And many of the recent advances in weather prediction have been **driven by** advances in climate science, not the other way around.

There is some good news, the alarmists who predicted a 'world food crisis' in 2010 are wildly off the mark.

In the US: 'After two straight years of wet spring weather delaying the seeding of the corn and soy crops, the weather this year has been ideal, allowing for farmers to sow their corn crop at a record pace, and plant soybeans at the fastest clip in six years.'

With burgeoning corn crops predicted, they are planning to dump it on China.

While looking for warming in the Pacific around the time of Christ I came across 'The reconstruction of surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean of 18,000 BP.'

In the depths of the last ice age 'temperatures within the centers of the subtropical gyres at 18,000 B.P. are generally as warm as, or warmer than, modern sea-surface temperatures. In particular, the Southern Hemisphere shows little or no cooling in tropical and subtropical latitudes except along the equator and in the eastern boundary current.' T.C. Moore Jr. et.al 1980

Keep in mind that New York was under a kilometre of ice at the time.

On the surface all looks normal, but just below the surface the temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have gone seriously cold. We can expect La Nina to dominate over the coming decade and large floods in the land of Oz.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Is the month of May, so far, really the 'coldest on record' ? Is that the UK, US, globally or what ? Does anyone, particularly el Gordo (who posted that claim) have any evidence of that ?

In the meantime, temperatures in the UK are predicted to rise steadily, leading to 24C later this week - apparently a good average for mid-June.

Do any of those figures mean anything, though ?

Actually, so far May has been reasonably warm and pretty dry, in Adelaide at least. On el gordo's reckoning, this factoid must actually prove global warming is happening. Or something.

Journalist, is it?

Well, with sterling examples like soi-disant journalist Keith Kloor and the bien plus soi-disant Tom Fuller, I am not sure I blame him for being confused as to what journalism entails.

They found evidence of the Roman Climate Optimum in the Indo Pacific Warm Pool.

http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_makassarstrait.php

According to El Gordo:

On the surface all looks normal, but just below the surface the temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have gone seriously cold. We can expect La Nina to dominate over the coming decade and large floods in the land of Oz.

I was going to pick up on this sentence and delve into its various mistakes, backing up any scientific arguments I made with references to literature and data.... but then I thought "Why bother? After all, El Gordo never backs up his assertions with sort of evidence. He'll just keep on making inane comment after speculative inane comment."

So, Master Gordo, I ask of you the following: drawing upon your extensive knowledge of atmosphere-ocean dynamics, please explain to the audience why:

1. Why cooler sub surface conditions in the equatorial Pacific can lead to "...large floods in the land of Oz". What are the dynamics involved?
2. How current observations of cooler subsurface conditions in the equatorial Pacific indicate that "We can expect La Nina to dominate over the current decade..."? What evidence is there for anomalously persistent La Nina conditions for the "current decade"? Please note that just saying "PDO" is not an answer.

I await with the most baited of breath.

Came across a tall bloke who thinks we will see a significant downturn in SST over 2010. 'My prediction, for what it's worth, is that global SST will be 0.1 - 0.15C below Jan 2008 levels by spring 2011.'

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/el-nino-and-the-solar-cycle/

You know if nobody posted in this thread Gordo would be stuck here to post away on his lonesome.

In 2007 Prof Toshio Yamagata, working with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reliably predicted the continuation of the drought in Australian.

Since then the farmers confidence in the Japanese model has gown and now JAMSTEC senior scientist Jing-Jia Luo is predicting a strong La Nina, to bring a wetter winter and spring conditions across eastern Australia.

"Eastern Australia would have more precipitation than normal during May to August, 2010," Mr Jing-Jia said.

With 20 years of more La Nina and less El Nino, there will be floods.

15 Stu,

It's funny how often people making claims like that go all quiet when you say "wanna bet", even if it's a small sum and goes to charity anyway.

At least EG is willing to make a statement if and when he's wrong.

"You know if nobody posted in this thread Gordo would be stuck here to post away on his lonesome."

Bingo. It's not like he answers people's points anyway; there's no reason to attempt to engage him in discussion.

Please don't engage me in discussion if you have nothing useful to add, but talk around me as much as you like.

The head of St Petersburg Pulkovo Astronimical Observatory, Habibulo Abdussamatov, says his analysis of sun activity data has led him to conclude that the Earth is entering a prolonged cooling phase. He believes the earth will enter a LIA within four years.

"Observations of the sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon doioxide is 'not guilty,'" Abdussamatov wrote, "and as for what lies ahead in the coming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged temperature drop."

Please don't engage me in discussion if you have nothing useful to add...

My irony metre just exploded.

Brian Tucker was an atmospheric scientist with CSIRO and chief from 1973 until his retirement in 1992, when the AGW gravy train was getting up a head of steam. Tucker thought there was little evidence to support the idea of 'net deleterious climate change despite...the exaggerations from Greenpeace.'

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/or180896.htm

'Why then has so much alarm been generated? The answer is complicated. In my opinion, it is due partly to the use and abuse of science to foment fear by those seeking to support ideological positions, and partly to the negative and fearful perspective that seems to characterise some environmental prejudices.'

More from that Brian Tucker interview from 1996 :

"The first assumption concerns the scientific theory. Within limits I believe this to be well founded, despite the criticisms of sceptics who say it overestimates, and of alarmists who say it underestimates consequential climate change."

In searching for the Roman Climate Optimum I found myself in the Middle East and there were suggestions that it was cooler at the time of Christ.

The story goes that JC walked on a frozen Sea of Galilee. Not true! It was warmer, in fact Lake Kinneret hasn't frozen in 10,000 years.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/f20854x7v44g7n16/

MFS "This is of course mere speculation, but it highlights the fallacy of assuming that changes in an area like Greenland or Iceland, the climate of which is so strongly affected by marine currents, reflects a global warming or cooling event."

Thanks for that so the next time someone points to "melting ice" "thinning ice" "less ice in" Greenland as evidence of "Global Warming" I may say "nah just changing marine currents".

Thanks!

âIâve been saying since February that weâll transition to La Nina by the middle of the hurricane season. I think weâre already seeing the atmosphere going into a La Nina state in advance of water temperatures. This will have interesting implications down the road. La Nina will dramatically cool off everything later this year and into next year, and it is a signal for strong hurricane activity,â Joe Bastardi predicts.

Hey, wait a minute, we were told that global warming will ramp up hurricane activity. So is there evidence to prove hurricanes become more severe in cooler times?

>Hey, wait a minute, we were told that global warming will ramp up hurricane activity. So is there evidence to prove hurricanes become more severe in cooler times?

I know the answer! Hah, my meteorology degree will prove to be good for something.

El Nino tends to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity and La Nina tends to promote Atlantic hurricane activity. It's all to do with wind shear - in El Nino years shear over the tropical Atlantic tends to be high, because of the teleconnections with the Walker Cell in the Pacific. And the same with La Nina, which tends to reduce shear.

So it's not directly affected by SSTs in the Pacific - it's the Atlantic SSTs that matter, but if there's loads of shear you'll never get a strong hurricane to organise.

Stu

Congrats, NOAA supports you.

'Across the tropical Atlantic these same wind patterns are opposite to those normally observed, and result in lower vertical wind shear. There tend to be more Atlantic hurricanes during La Niña because of this expanded area of low vertical wind shear.'

From my distant recollection of my studies of Roman History, Roman writers in original sources mention the Tiber freezing over.
I couldn't say when that stopped happening, but for the Tiber to go within about 100 years from freezing over in winter to being as warm as it is today would have involved a fairly cataclysmic shift in climate in the area - a shift which I do not recall ever reading about in my studies of the Roman economy including agriculture and trade.

I may not have done a temperature reconstruction here, but I believe I have posted less groundless assertion and more fact than has Tony "I don't always tell the truth" Abbott.

Tony "I don't always tell the truth" Abbott is a good Catholic and doesn't go out of his way to tell fibs, but in the heat of political brawling there is a tendency to speak from the heart and not the head.

On the RCO there may have been 'a fairly cataclysmic shift in climate in the area', I will continue the search.

Back to the present hurricane season and comparisons with the past. The winter of 1779-80 in the US was one of the worst on record and it might just be a coincidence that 1780 is also known as the 'great hurricane year'. Caviedes C.N. (1991 also has it down as a La Nina year.

JMurphy

Graeme Pearman replaced Tucker and became Chief of CSIRO Atmospheric Research in Australia from 1992 to 2002.

He is now, according to Wiki, an international expert on increasing levels of carbon dioxide and global warming. He is a consultant with Future Climate : Associates.

There was a sea change taking place from the time Pearman came onboard.

Vince

Thinking about abrupt climate change I discovered at the end of the Eemian interglacial, 115,000 years ago, there was a serious cooling off in south-east France.
The story was published in Nature, by Voillard.

They had a temperate forest of hardwoods. Then, in the space of about 20 years a rapid cooling took place that killed off the temperate forests. All the hardwoods died and all that was left was boreal forest, the pine, birch, and spruce.

It became like Scandinavia in 20 years. What on earth happened?

El Gordo,
I am pretty sure that Brian Tucker is the author of an article or pamphlet, published by CSIRO back in the early 1990s, or even late 1980s, on the subject of climate and coping with climate change, that resides somewhere in my files. I have a suspicion that the thrust of argument in this article is far from being congenial to your thesis of a âsea changeâ at CSIRO.
Unfortunately, I cannot find it now, having had to shunt many boxes of files back and forth between my office and garage in the last several years, and Iâm having trouble finding some stuff. I will keep lookingâ¦â¦

Peterd, I will happily take back my insinuation if proven wrong.

The bristlecone pines in California's White Mountains clearly show that the RCO wasn't happening there. It was cooler than the MWP and our Modern Climate Optimum.

In northeastern South Africa there was a prolonged warm, wet period from AD 40-400.

http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/3/295

Vince

In 480 AD the Tiber River in Rome supposedly froze over and had done so in times previous, but I cannot confirm the story.

Following on from el Gordo's Pearman associations, at the time of the ABC interview previously mentioned, Brian Tucker was a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a position that Jennifer Marohasy now holds/held, according to the last Annual Report from 2007/8.

Nonetheless, Tucker seems to have still been a part of that conspiracy some so-called skeptics are always banging on about, as seen by the following :

The media is invited to the opening of the historical exhibition to hear addresses by Dr Stone, Mr Peter Noar, president of the Frosterley Club of long-serving retired Bureau officers, and Dr Brian Tucker, FTSE, former Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research.
Australian BOM, 2001

And he gave the World Meteorological Day Address in 1997, according to this reference to it.

And he produced a CSIRO book called Climate and Weather in 1986 which, although I can't get a look at it anywhere, one can assume acknowledges the reality of global warming.

So I see no sea-change occurring at CSIRO after Tucker left - Pearman carried on in the same way as Tucker had before him.

I was wrong about Tucker, he was obviously of the same view as Pearman. There was no sea change.

El Gordo,

Juvenal, writing during the 1st Century AD, talks about ice on the Tiber in winter.

This corresponds perfectly with Tony "I don't always tell the truth" Abbott's "Roman Warm Period".

We therefore have two problems with Abbott's nonsense:

-- This supposed "Roman warm period" was - in Rome at least - quite cold.

-- The relevance of the climate of 1stC AD Rome to the current warming climate isn't clear.

Vince

I'll take your word on that, but having scoured google scholar there is nothing solid. The relevance of comparing then to now is not yet clear, except that as we drift into a cool wet phase it will be interesting to see historical parallels.

O/T The concept of a troll dungeon for heretics is a winner and Tim deserves the internet award for innovative new ideas on the blogosphere.

I would just like to say thanks to all the Deltoid larrikins for helping an unemployed sports writer become a second-rate science journalist in the new media.

The event horizon looms large and permanent exile is just around the corner, so I will take my leave early...bye.

I feel something has been achieved here.

Nothing I can put my finger on in my Fridag night wine soaked state, but something.

Definitely too early to tell...

>I would just like to say thanks to all the Deltoid larrikins for helping an unemployed sports writer become a second-rate science journalist in the new media.

Who's got tickets on himself! "Second rate", you wish! Though you would fit in over a Watts.