Apparently the USFS has been doing such a good job of creating forest wildfires in the name of “saving” targeted species that don’t like logging that they are now branching out. Tom Vilsack just created a new USDA Federal Advisory Committee “to provide advice and recommendations on modernizing landscape management across national forests within the Northwest Forest Plan area in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.”
The purpose of the committee is to “update” the failed Northwest Forest Plan “so that national forests are managed sustainably, adapted to climate change, and resilient to wildfire, insects, disease, and other disturbances, while meeting the needs of local communities” and “also advise how these planning efforts can complement the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.” It will be interesting to see how they plan to “meet the needs local communities,” when even Norm Johnson says that have consistently failed to do so — and government handouts aren’t what’s needed or wanted by most. Jobs, safe forests, and aesthetics should be the focus, in my opinion, certainly not “climate change”; which forests have successfully adapted to for millions of years without government intervention.
The committee contains key members of the Northwest Forest Planning Committee and others who have helped to create this predictable “crisis” in the first place, or have directly profited by its implementation and results. Appointed members include Northwest Plan co-founder, Jerry Franklin, and environmental lawyer, Susan Jane Brown, among others. These are the very people many hold directly responsible for the massive increase in federal forest fire frequency, severity, and extent, and yet: “Establishing this committee is another way for us to embrace climate-smart science, ensure we hear from diverse voices and get a range of perspectives on how to best confront the wildfire crisis and climate change.”
So it appears that by embracing this new kind of “climate-smart science” they will be able to “complement the Wildfire Crisis Strategy?” This sounds like one more way of making things worse, not better! While a handful of people have directly profited by the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan since Clinton created it in the 1990s, the cost has been tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, tens of millions of burned forestland acres and killed wildlife, widespread rural unemployment, thousands of burned homes, hundreds of dead people, and ruined families and communities. And for what? No evidence a single spotted owl, marbled murrelet, or coho has “survived” because of this gross misdirection. How did we start down this path, and why can’t we get off?
At some point this costly scam needs to end, and maybe this is a step in that direction. One can hope: https://northwestobserver.com/index.php?ArticleId=2856&fbclid=IwAR0xn2cyORelNDOgTyfimZUH8-E9uf0QJPHUe8BUdC3MkHzAX9S4su0ywtc
Bob, perhaps you should have a cup of coffee before posting 🙂
The Secretary of Agriculture appointed me and Dr. Franklin (and 19 other people) as *volunteers* to the federal advisory committee: we serve without pay, so no, not “hired” or otherwise employed by USDA. There was an open application process earlier this year: did you happen to apply?
For my part, I am representing collaborative organizations – not science (although I could argue collaboration is a science) – on the committee. Dr. Franklin represents “forest ecology,” which is a scientific discipline. Maybe that’s the “new science” you’re referring to?
The FACA meetings will be open to the public, and I would encourage anyone who is interested to attend. The committee will provide consensus recommendations to the Secretary; I don’t believe we’ll be “manag[ing] the climate,” but that sure would be a neat trick!!
Thanks Susan: Coffee and sleep. Posted before completed, but I wanted to get link online for others to review. I have met Franklin several times through the years and briefly worked with Norm Johnson on thew Clinton Plan before we both realized we were going in different directions: passive management vs. active management. My predictions of wildfire by following Clinton at that time were well-known and got a certain amount of national attention — to no avail, obviously.
Jerry and Norm are nice guys, but they have no credible forest management experience. Legal actions to enforce their perspectives have only made matters worse. This has nothing to do with the “climate” and everything to do with “big government” in my opinion, based on experience. Here is what I said on this topic a few days ago while being interviewed by Lars Larson on his radio show (8 minutes): http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Interviews/20230707_Lars_Larson/Larson-Zybach_20230707.mp3
A reminder of the Northwest Forest Plans goals. Of the 5 goals, I would venture that #4 has been the most successful of the 5 goals. As the level of timber sales has been very predictable, meanwhile the acreage consumed by wildfire has grown exponentially since the NWFP was adopted.
As for the climate, it would be interesting to know how many tons of smoke have been created annually by these mega fires or the amount of carbon sequestered vs tons of smoke.
The plan provided for five major goals:
1. Never forget human and economic dimensions of the issues;
2. Protect the long-term health of forests, wildlife, and waterways;
3. Focus on scientifically sound, ecologically credible, and legally responsible strategies and implementation;
4. Produce a predictable and sustainable level of timber sales and nontimber resources; and
5. Ensure that federal agencies work together.[2]
The NWFP was originally drafted with the intent of protecting critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, though the plan came to include much broader habitat protection goals.
I’m not sure that #3 is even possible. Although I have a degree as an “historical ecologist,” I have no idea what “ecologically credible” even means — and I doubt than anyone else does, either.
On the other hand, “scientifically sound” and “legally responsible” sound like polar opposites, given today’s forestry laws and regulations. Does anyone have an example where this has been tried and not resulted in a lawsuit since 1990?
The Northwest Forest Plan has been a disaster for our forests, wildlife, and rural communities for more than 30 years — as clearly and scientifically predicted — and yet we now want to add another pointless committee as a “complement?” Whatever happened to the 1897 Organic Act and experienced, common sense forest management?
Bob,
I completely agree. #3 is vague and can not be reasonably quantified or measured. The other four goals have been abject failures. Unless, you consider virtually zero productive timber sales as predictable and somehow meeting the aim of goal #4.
Sadly, the Probably Sale Quantities (PSQ) have never been attained due to risk aversion by federal managers. While I agree (having worked in forestry in Oregon since the 1980s) that the NWFP definitely allowed forest management on federal lands to move forward after being tied up in court for a long time, the actual implementation fell short of what was planned.
Dear Ms. Brown,
Any committee that purports to be “climate smart” needs at least one physical scientist onboard. We are the ones who can tell if the claims made by alarmists have any validity and therefore whether the remedies proposed will have any positive or negative effects on our climate.
Those with skills in forestry can certainly address issues of healthy vs unhealthy forests. But how that extends to our climate, with its enormous complexity, requires a physical scientist.
With all of the non-science (or simply nonsense) in play today, you probably need in addition, a physicist to explain that science has no proper “consensus” component. If you missed Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s lecture on this subject, you can catch a rerun here:
http://www.richardfeynman.com/
There is an objective reality out there that too many attorneys seem unable to comprehend. And it is VERY unlikely that a committee of vested interests will ever be able to understand even the simplest climate science.
You need to understand why the first scientific society, The Royal Society, took as its motto, “Nullius in verba,” meaning “Take nobody’s word for it.” That expressed the desire of the Fellows to decide questions of science by recourse to experiments and to avoid the domination of authority.
Your committee is obviously designed to do just the opposite.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Rather than amending the Northwest Forest Plan it should be tossed out as a admitted failure. Not only has it failed to save the Spotted Owl, and the former timber communities. The failed NW Forest Plan has become a major factor in the incineration of critical Owl habitat and cherished national forest lands, which is the only economic value that is left for these former timber towns.
These mega fire rarely happened in actively managed forests. How many more acres of burnt and blackened forest and incinerated owl habitat do we need as examples of this failed plan?
Industrial timber lands burn at higher severity than natural forests and old forest owl habitat:
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-6255/5/2/41
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fee.2499
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1710
Climate change is a primary driver of increased area burned:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120
A- that last paper
“Our results indicate that nearly all the observed increase in BA is due to anthropogenic climate change” and yet.. we know that there are many other factors.. which haven’t been included in the models. Count me dubious of that specific claim.
You can be dubious, but I’d say that most credible fire scientists are in agreement that climate change is “a primary driver,” but maybe not “the primary diver.” Longer fire seasons and warmer weather (resulting from climate change) have disproportionately large effects on the probability of megafire.
A. – I think we’re getting into definitional questions here.. according to the Cambridge Dictionary primary means “more important than anything else”. So according to that definition (and there are other defs that are different) you only get one “primary”. The rest are secondary. Or if we were to be more specific, “one of several main causes.”
Dubious? I think it is more science to meet the narrative….🤣. Seems like all the planning for Forest resilience to climate change (?) used to be called silviculture.
On excuse is as good as another to keep from LOGGING National Forest lands. Call it what you will, cutting timber on “suitable” lands, in the “standard component) (that’ll wake up a few brain cells), or whatever lands left for timber management is why the Agency exists!
WT? This is a nonsense post. I certainly don’t always agree with the posts on this site, but the vast majority I can at least see where the person is coming from and appreciate their view. This is a negative post without thought or substance. I expect more from TSW!
Are you the same Anonymous or a different Anonymous? Some of you sound the same and then sometimes sound like someone else. Hard to take complaints seriously when the complainer remains hidden in the shadows. Maybe in a herd with others, some credible and others not-so-much. Maybe a distinctive pseudonym for some kind of consistency for readers?
It was good to see you attempt to add some thought to the post. The thing I like about TSW is there are people on here with very different opinions from mine, but they often provide nuanced rationale for their thoughts. After years of being active on here, I pride myself in the fact that this is the first time I can think of that you’ve replied to one of my comments and this is the first time I have commented or replied to any of your post or comments. I will go back to that now.
Thanks, Anonymous. Don’t forget that “pride goeth before the fall.” You are correct in that I rarely respond to anyone not using a real (or realistic) name, and no idea why you’ve never responded to my posts or comments before — but I will assume it is because we are in full agreement on everything unless I hear different. From someone or another.
“in my opinion, certainly not “climate change”; which forests have successfully adapted to for millions of years without government intervention.”
But have they adapted to climate change of the current very rapid rate?
The globe is warming now by about 0.25 C/decade. As a comparison, the average rate of warming from the last glacial maximum to the start of the Holocene was about 0.006 C/decade. That’s a factor of 42 times faster.
Hi David: There is no way those numbers are accurate. None. Assuming it is even possible to derive a useful “global temperature” — there is no way to do it for the past and no indication that “rate of change” can be reasonably calculated, much less “42x.” Or whether the results would be good or bad, even if the numbers had some sort of validity. Which we both know are largely manufactured to make a point or cash a check.
Bob,
Look the numbers up.
The Last Glacial Maximum ended about 21,000 years ago. The Holocene started about 11,700 years ago. The global warming over that period was 6 C.
Hence the average warming rate was
6 C/(21,000-11,700 yrs) ~ 6 C/9300 yrs ~ 0.0006 C/yr ~ 0.006 C/decade.
Please let me know if you think my numbers are wrong.
Hi David:
It has been quite a while since I did much reading on the topic, but I do recall reasoned speculation that previous warmings may have taken place fairly rapidly — in fits and starts — rather than gradually, as your “average” would imply. The years 536 and 1816 provide good short-term examples.
Also, delineations of a Holocene seem to take place at different times over different areas of the globe. Assuming your general numbers are accurate, what does that have to do with now? People are very adaptable, and so are many other species. I have never seen any convincing information that today’s climate is particularly unusual, that it is being directly impacted by CO2 (other human actions, such as land clearing, livestock grazing, and construction might be a minor factor), or that there is any type of imminent danger as global climate continues to change.
And I remain very skeptical that a useful “global temperature” can even be reasonably calculated, much less being of any particular value if it can. Night and day.
David should point out that the actual rate of rise of the Global Temperature Anomaly since the dawn of the satellite era is 0.13 C/decade, per Roy Spencer and NASA satellite temperature data:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/
And that is from the end of the last cooling period (1945 to 1977). This correlates well with the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1977, when the Pacific Ocean switched from its cold to warm mode.
Over the last eight years, the Global Temperature Anomaly has been almost flat, going up and down a little.
Because we live on a fluid planet with vast oceans and atmospheres, climate variations are to be expected on yearly to multi-decadal to century time periods When we have strong El Ninos, as in 1998 and 2016, the planet warms up a little. When we have strong La Ninas, the planet cools. ENSO cycles (El Nino Southern Oscillation cycles) have nothing to do with carbon dioxide and everything to do with sea surface temperatures off the coast of Peru.
Temperatures during this Holocene interglacial period (about 10,000 years) have generally trended downward, due to an advancing Milankovitch cycle (precession of the equinoxes). This has changed the forests in the Willamette Valley from Ponderosa pine to Douglas fir.
The exceptions to this general decline in temperature have been several prominent Warm Periods that go by the names of the civilizations they spawned, like Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and Modern. Each of these has been cooler than the previous one, as the Earth’s closest approach to the Sun has shifted from July to January.
What may save us from plunging into the next Ice Age is not carbon dioxide but changing orbital parameters, such that the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit is decreasing to near zero. This will almost eliminate the 80 watts/m2 more insolation (incoming solar radiation) that we now get at closest approach to the Sun in January.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Gordon J. Fulks wrote:
“David should point out that the actual rate of rise of the Global Temperature Anomaly since the dawn of the satellite era is 0.13 C/decade”
More slight of hand by the denier.
That’s the rate for UAH’s lower troposphere, not the surface.
And it’s well known that that number is an outlier. Gordon certainly knows this, but won’t tell you.
The other group that measures the temperature of the lower troposphere, RSS, finds a linear trend of +0.21 C/decade over the same period as UAH.
This is in accord with every group that measures surface temperatures and calculates their trends: NASA GISS, NOAA, JMA, HadCRUT.
Not many people accept UAH’s numbers. To put it bluntly, they don’t trust them. Why? For one thing, UAH refuses to share the code for their model. They want to keep it secret. For another, they made a huge sign error in the 1990s, and it took many years and much effort to get them to admit it. Doing so completely changed their results.
Finally, even a global warming rate of +0.13 C/decade is HUGE compared to anything seen in the geological past.
More name-calling from a person who specializes in such.
As to Appell’s claim that NASA’s UAH group is out of step and therefore wrong, that is not the way we do science. We look for the best science, which often does not come from those who just go along.
As to his perpetual claim that the NASA satellite data is inferior to the surface data, that is simply not the case. Surface data is notoriously contaminated with the Urban Heat Island Effect and therefore unreliable at best and dishonest at worst. Climatologists have long expressed concern about compilations of surface measurements that are contaminated with effects of urban growth around existing measurement stations.
As to the nonsense about “HUGE” warming recently, we saw similar warming in the early 20th century up to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. And we see greater warming still from the ENSO cycles, where the temperature of the equatorial Pacific off of Peru can drive considerable changes in the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA) over just a few months. El Ninos provide a substantial jump in the GTA over a short period of time. La Ninas typically present cooling more gradually after an El Nino.
The science here is that our oceans contain the vast majority of mobile heat on this planet and therefore heavily influence the global temperature. In fact, the first ten feet of our oceans contain as much heat as in the entire Earth’s atmosphere. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is thought largely responsible for climate cycles over decades. The Atlantic Mulitdecadal Oscillation (or Thermohaline Circulation) also drives decades long changes in our climate.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Gordon: after an *extremely* person attack on me, you don’t have the right to complain about “name calling.”
Gordon J. Fulks wrote:
As to Appell’s claim that NASA’s UAH group is out of step and therefore wrong, that is not the way we do science. We look for the best science, which often does not come from those who just go along.
Gordon, you don’t do any science…but go ahead and explain why UAH is the “best science.” Mind, every other temperature group disagrees with them.
Don’t ignore their huge sign error of the last 90s, which they refused to acknowledge for years….
More personal attacks, David. As a journalist, you cannot help yourself, can you?
I am currently one of ten Directors of the CO2 Coalition, along with John Clauser, the 2022 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Will Happer, emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton University, and Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace. We do first-rate science every day, just as we have for many years. I am the Chairman of our Education Committee, where we write and publish authoritative teaching materials for young people. That is important, so that young people do not grow up to think that science is what they get from journalists.
As to the NASA satellite data analysis from Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), it has always been first rate. Yet you constantly badmouth them over some imagined transgression thirty years ago. There has always been a keen rivalry with a competing group known as Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). When either group changes their analysis, they redo the entire satellite record, making previous approaches irrelevant.
The competition between groups has helped both improve their product. But I have observed that RSS now alters their approach to satellite data analysis to achieve results consistent with surface stations. That says they are too heavily aligned with the politics of this subject to do reliable science. They should act as a check on the surface station records, not as a confirmation.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Oh Gordon, stop it. It is not a personal attack to ask you to justify your data.
“As to the NASA satellite data analysis from Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), it has always been first rate. Yet you constantly badmouth them over some imagined transgression thirty years ago.”
Why is the UAH data “first rate?” Tell us.
Their sign error was egregious. I’ve listened to several stories. It took them many years to even acknowledge the responses. Their data showed cooling until they finally fixed their sign error, when it then showed warming. That shows a lot about their biases.
UAH also won’t share their computer code. No one can verify it or try to understand it.
Every other temperature group shows much more warming than UAH: GISS, NOAA, HadCRUT, JMA, RSS. Why should we accept that UAH is better than all of them? Don’t complain about personal attacks — answer this question.
BTW, UAH’s 20-yr trend for global LT temp is +0.18 C/decade. 15-year trend is +0.24 C/decade. Despite the three recent La Ninas in a row.
I wouldn’t brag about having Patrick Moore on my team. His climate claims are usually laughable to people who know the field, and his opinion seems to depend on who’s paying him. This is what he wrote back in the late part of the 2000s when he was being paid by the nuclear industry:
“Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions — or nearly 10 percent of global emissions — of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change.”
– Patrick Moore, Washington Post, 2006
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
“….nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.”
— Patrick Moore, Washington Post, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
“When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear.”
– – Patrick Moore, Washington Post, 2006
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
Who’s paying Patrick now?
Dear David,
Yes, we know that you are an attack dog who goes after anyone who dares to disagree with your views on climate. Science is driven by logic and evidence, not personal attacks.
Dr. Patrick Moore is someone you intensely dislike, because he once supported climate alarm and was a founder of Greenpeace.
But like all good scientists, he changed his mind over time as the facts became clear.
1) There is NO clear signal of ANY warming from human emissions of CO2. The Raman scattering lines of CO2 are almost saturated.
2) Renewable energy simply does not work, because it is so unreliable.
3) Nuclear power is the clear alternative to carbon-based energy.
Dr. Moore did support concerns about the large scale burning of fossil fuels but now realizes that the resulting carbon dioxide is extremely valuable to our ecosystems and the possible warming extremely minor.
Dr. Moore also supported and continues to support nuclear power, because it is soo clean and does not litter the countryside with windmills that harm scenery, as well as kill birds and bats.
But you hope to tar and feather him for that support, as if he works for the nuclear industry. He does not. He is one of our Directors of the CO2 Coalition, along with Nobel Laureate in physics, John Clauser. All of us serve without compensation.
Do you also criticize Dr. James Hansen for his strong support of nuclear power and blast him as a stooge of the nuclear industry? Of course not! Your constant personal attacks are only directed at those of us who realize that CO2 is overwhelmingly beneficial.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Gordon wrote:
“Yes, we know that you are an attack dog who goes after anyone who dares to disagree with your views on climate.”
Like all bullies, the King of Personal Attacks doesn’t like it when he gets it back in return.
“But like all good scientists, he changed his mind over time as the facts became clear.”
In other words, he never under$tood the $cience in the fir$t place and made a lot of claim$ about CO2 that he never under$tood.
In other word$, $omeone el$e $tarted to pay him and he could make more money el$ewhere.
1) There is NO clear signal of ANY warming from human emissions of CO2.
Gordon is very far behind the science — and he wants to teach!!
“Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
“Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract
“Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339–343 (19 March 2015).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html
The Raman scattering lines of CO2 are almost saturated.
Why?
Let’s hear from an expert:
See the sidebar on page 37 of:
Pierrehumbert RT 2011: Infrared radiation and planetary temperature. Physics Today 64, 33-38
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
“Saturation fallacies”
“The path to the present understanding of the effect of carbon dioxide on climate was not without its missteps. Notably, in 1900 Knut Ångström (son of Anders Ångström, whose name graces a unit of length widely used among spectroscopists) argued in opposition to his fellow Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius that increasing CO2 could not affect Earth’s climate. Ångström claimed that IR absorption by CO2 was saturated in the sense that, for those wavelengths CO2 could absorb at all, the CO2 already present in Earth’s atmosphere was absorbing essentially all of the IR. With regard to Earthlike atmospheres, Ångström was doubly wrong. First, modern spectroscopy shows that CO2 is nowhere near being saturated. Ångström’s laboratory experiments were simply too inaccurate to show the additional absorption in the wings of the 667-cm−1 CO2 feature that follows upon increasing CO2. But even if CO2 were saturated in Ångström’s sense—as indeed it is on Venus—his argument would nonetheless be fallacious. The Venusian atmosphere as a whole may be saturated with regard to IR absorption, but the radiation only escapes from the thin upper portions of the atmosphere that are not saturated. Hot as Venus is, it would become still hotter if one added CO2 to its atmosphere.”
Pierrehumbert RT 2011: Infrared radiation and planetary temperature. Physics Today 64, 33-38
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
“2) Renewable energy simply does not work, because it is so unreliable.”
Several countries are now getting all their electricity from renewable sources.
Fossil fuels change the climate for at least 100,000 years, and prematurely kill 1 in 5 people on the planet.
“Dr. Moore did support concerns about the large scale burning of fossil fuels but now realizes that the resulting carbon dioxide is extremely valuable to our ecosystems and the possible warming extremely minor.”
Where has Moore said that?
“Dr. Moore also supported and continues to support nuclear power, because it is soo clean and does not litter the countryside with windmills that harm scenery, as well as kill birds and bats.”
Moore supported nuclear when he was paid to. That’s why he warned against catastrophic climate change from CO2.
Fossil fuels kill orders of more birds than do wind turbines.
“He is one of our Directors of the CO2 Coalition, along with Nobel Laureate in physics, John Clauser.”
Is this ragtag group of people WHO NEVER PUBLISH ANY SCIENCE suppose to impress anyone?
You have on Nobel Laureate. I’ve already given you a link of over 20 who warn about fossil fuels.
And you still haven’t pointed to any publications of Clausen on clouds or climate science. Why not?
Gordon wrote:
“Do you also criticize Dr. James Hansen for his strong support of nuclear power and blast him as a stooge of the nuclear industry?”
Hansen doesn’t deny AGW.
“Your constant personal attacks are only directed at those of us who realize that CO2 is overwhelmingly beneficial.”
You’ve never shown anything at all like that. Never. It’s always just a few buzzwords with people like you. Never anything in detail, never anything that acknowledges all of the science, and ESPECIALLY never anything published in quality peer reviewed journals.
You are amateurs, bloggers and pretenders, and for as long as I’ve read your comments (and corrected your op-eds in the Oregonian) always have been.
And now your denial is endangering the world.
Gordon wrote:
“I am currently one of ten Directors of the CO2 Coalition”
Big deal. They’ll take any warm body who has a PhD. You have never published a single peer reviewed paper on climate science. Nor has John Clausen. You have no standing in the climate science community whatsoever.
For as long as I’ve been reading your comments you have been constantly trying to hype and exaggerate your status and your standing and your importance. All because you don’t have any. But you were never important to any research science — you published just one peer reviewed journal paper in your entire career. By the time I left graduate school I had published two, one that has received hundreds of citations, and another work was published in a conference proceedings.
As someone who knows how professional science works, I don’t see that you’ve had the slightest impact whatsoever. You have sold your soul over to the anti-scientific denier crowd, which publishing absolutely nothing of any importance about climate science. Nothing.
Instead you pretend and beg for attention, from the Heartland Institute, the CO2 Coalition, acting like these affiliations mean something. They are well known denier organizations that receive funding from fossil fuel interests. None of you there have accomplished anything of scientific importance, let alone disprove the dominant AGW paradigm. You’re propagandists, who when criticized whine and complain about personal attacks, but you have nothing to contribute to climate science and no climate scientists pay you the least regard and frankly have never heard of you. Nor should they.
Yes, Gordon, THAT’s a personal attack. Just like you gave me a few days ago. You certainly deserve it for your condensing attitude, your constant begging for attention, and your null impact on climate science.
Gordon J. Fulks wrote:
“As to Appell’s claim that NASA’s UAH group is out of step and therefore wrong, that is not the way we do science.”
Gordon, YOU don’t do any science at all, so let’s toss that part out.
If you’re not familiar with the UAH saga of the last 1990s, you should learn. For years their data showed no warming in the lower troposphere, despite all models saying it should be warming. Then someone found a sign error in their work. From what I’ve been told by someone who was VERY closely involved, UAH resisted acknowledging this error for still more years, until someone went to them literally and pointed it out exactly doing calculations on a chalkboard.
Guess what? When corrected, their data showed warming, just as the models were projecting.
Wiki puts it thus:
“Pre-1998 results published by UAH showed no warming of the atmosphere. In a 1998 paper, Wentz and Schabel showed this (along with other discrepancies) was due to the orbital decay of the NOAA satellites. With these errors corrected, the UAH data showed a 0.07 °C/decade increase in lower troposphere temperature.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset#Comparison_with_other_data_and_models
UAH is still the outlier in terms of temperature trend.
Gordon Fulks wrote:
“As to his perpetual claim that the NASA satellite data is inferior to the surface data, that is simply not the case. Surface data is notoriously contaminated with the Urban Heat Island Effect and therefore unreliable at best and dishonest at worst. Climatologists have long expressed concern about compilations of surface measurements that are contaminated with effects of urban growth around existing measurement stations.”
I’ve never said “NASA’s satellite data is inferior.” That claim is a lie.
I’ve said UAH’s calculations are inferior.
Urban areas are only a small part of the globe, ~1-2%. Any urban heat island effect has a minimal effect on global temperature.
“While urban areas are warmer than surrounding rural areas, the urban heat island effect has had little to no effect on our warming world because scientists have accounted for it in their measurements.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/44/can-you-explain-the-urban-heat-island-effect/
“Climate change is not a cause but an amplifier of the urban heat island effect.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Climate_change_as_an_amplifier
It gets really tiring correcting all the incorrect claims you and our ilk put out. That’s probably part of your strategy, to flood the zone.
Gordon wrote:
“As to the nonsense about “HUGE” warming recently, we saw similar warming in the early 20th century up to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s”
Here is the global temperature record:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/graph_data/Global_Mean_Estimates_based_on_Land_and_Ocean_Data/graph.html
Where in the 1930s was there been anything like the prolonged increase in global temperature since the 1970s? Almost 50 years now.
Gordon Fulks wrote:
“And we see greater warming still from the ENSO cycles, where the temperature of the equatorial Pacific off of Peru can drive considerable changes in the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA) over just a few months. El Ninos provide a substantial jump in the GTA over a short period of time. La Ninas typically present cooling more gradually after an El Nino.”
Why are we seeing ever warmer El Ninos and ever warmer La Ninas?
https://davidappell.blogspot.com/2018/07/increasing-temperatures-of-enso-seasons.html
Gordon wrote:
“The science here is that our oceans contain the vast majority of mobile heat on this planet and therefore heavily influence the global temperature. In fact, the first ten feet of our oceans contain as much heat as in the entire Earth’s atmosphere. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is thought largely responsible for climate cycles over decades. The Atlantic Mulitdecadal Oscillation (or Thermohaline Circulation) also drives decades long changes in our climate.”
Oh please, that’s not worthy of a PhD.
The PDO and AMO are *cycles*. They do not add heat long-term to the atmosphere — they cycle it. So why has the atmosphere (and ocean) been getting warmer for over 100 years, about three cycles of the PDO & AMO?
Huh?
Besides, the phase of the PDO isn’t clear right now. The last positive “phase” was only about 5 years in length, and the PDO has turned negative since about 2020.
The PDO and AMO do not add heat to the climate system — atmosphere and ocean. Yet both the atmo and ocean are warming long-term.
Jeez, David: I can understand your fascination with Dr. Fulks, but all of this PDA you are heaping on him is a little disquieting. Maybe tone it down little?
Bob Zybach wrote:
“Jeez, David: I can understand your fascination with Dr. Fulks, but all of this PDA you are heaping on him is a little disquieting. Maybe tone it down little?”
Fulks is perpetually condescending and always holier-than-thou.
And he likes to pretend he’s a researching climate scientist, when nothing could be further than the truth.
His comments deserve replies that show his claims are a sham.
I found it interesting how different the USDA announcement of the FACA committee was worded vs. the Forest Service announcement.
OK, A tell us a bit more if you don’t mind.. would rather not read each one if I can help it..
I find it interesting that this Administration is taking the approach as the Clinton Administration and avoiding any Forest Service management types who might taint the process with their hands on the ground experience, knowledge and historical perspective.
Dear John,
The Biden Administration has entirely favored political types over those with professional experience. Perhaps there is a professional appointee out there somewhere. But most have been ghastly political types who have inadequate professional credentials.
This has been disastrous.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA