Rain forest fires are not climate

Some pertinent points:

1. Rainfall has been ABOVE AVERAGE in much of the Amazon Rain forest unless the rain forest has extended offshore, Panama has been below average something we see during lower than average ACE index hurricane seasons in the Main Development areas, as was forecast by my company in April.  That was well seen.

2. South America has not been warm in any kind of overpowering fashion. In fact, one can argue that it has been average or below, more than above. It has been warm in the eastern part of the Amazon rain forecast, but there has not been a climate emergency pattern there.
3. And this may have longer term climate implication given the nature of the oceans and total solar irradiance (both huge drivers in the climate) the southern oceans have cooled quite a bit, most notably around South America.

So here is what some objective journalist might want to do. Bring this up with the people pushing that the rain forecast fires are a part of climate change.  If that’s the case, its because the climate and some large scale indicators around South America are opposite of what is being pushed.

I suspect some people on the other side of the AGW issue are seeing the southern oceans cooling down some and also the major imbalance between the southern oceans and northern oceans, which has to be having an impact on the overall global weather pattern when one considers the southern hemisphere contains 80% of our oceans. Oceans are the greatest storehouse of heat, with low estimates at 80% and the highest at 99.9% . The AGW argument puts all their eggs in the basket that a warming atmosphere is causing the oceans to warm. An interesting example is the analogy of a boiling a pot of water.  The outside of the pot warms first. Unfortunately its an apples and oranges thing, since the pots temperature becomes HIGHER than the water it is heating, so eventually it warms it.  Given the stored nature of heat in the ocean, whether 80% or 99.9%, it is intuitive that an ocean should control the air above it.  The question is why is it warming? I can see the argument that if you warm the atmosphere above, then the oceans cool less quickly, giving them a higher base point to warm from, but that would mean decreased sensitivity to CO2, which is a huge point raised by climate skeptics who question the amount of warming. The IPCC has some scenarios of a 4-5 degree C warming, while people on my side of the issue put it more at 1-2 degrees C.  Given the greening of the planet so far (the greatest in the satellite era) this would be a good thing.

It it is warming a bit, we should adapt to it, and use the benefits to help further the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The straw man argument is that we climate skeptics “deny” climate change. That should raise red flags right off the bat.  Questioning a cause, or even agreeing that it has some impact, yet questioning the amount, gets you branded. Is that how scientific inquiry works now? The skeptic side points to natural cycles inherent in our unbalanced climate system, and how that imbalance is corrected.  You have some brilliant solar scientists, examples in my previous piece, that trace it back to the sun, which I think has merit, but even I question the timing of the response. Remember if one wants to use the solar argument, there were 200 years of high sunspot activity before we started entering this minimum. If the sun is the player, then where is the heat from all those years stored? Should be the oceans.

But if we are going to play the denial game, then perhaps we should note there is a denial of natural climate change as a the MAIN driver, and the blind acceptance of CO2 as the climate control knob from the warming campaign. Lets not though, lets just say that many of us are of the opinion the attribution to CO2 is overdone.

We are approaching 2020 and none of the dreadful forecasts from around the turn of the century have come true. Man is better off now than we were 20, 40, 60, 80 ,100 etc years ago in the good old days without energy and fossil fuels and a slightly cooler planet.

Matt Ridley Points it here and nails it, “There are fewer ongoing wars than ever before in history. Extreme poverty is declining dramatically. Green areas on the planet are expanding. Infant mortality is decreasing. Deaths from storms and other natural disasters have dropped 90% since the 1920s.”

If you are simply agenda driven, you are going to dismiss the cooling of the southern oceans, and point to the warmth of the northern oceans relative to average. But time will tell, it always does.

It seems like there is some degree of denial of Le Chatieiers principle on the other side.  This is a principle stating that if a constraint (such as a change in pressure, temperature, or concentration of a reactant) is applied to a system in equilibrium, the equilibrium will shift so as to tend to counteract the effect of the constraint.

So the deviations from average in the northern hemisphere are likely due to both more land surrounding the northern oceans and hence influencing them, and increased water vapor leading greater warming where it is cold and dry. That can vividly seen here in winter warming, increase in WV 2006-2017.

Increase in winter temperatures.

There is a much stronger increase in water vapor in the low levels over the tropics than in the arctic, yet look who has the lions share of winter warming. And that is seen in no uncertain terms here. Arctic temperatures since 1958.

The red line is the summer where the mean temperature is a bit above freezing. Summer temperagtures have a built in thermostat called melting ice. Melting takes energy which it takes it out of the air.  Warming its capped, again a natural counter to the missive the arctic will melt completely away.  Not with the summer season barely above freezing.

So we have gone from rain forest fires to a brief look at why all we are seeing natural variation inherent to the system, that we have never been able to observe before. Over the years, I have grown more open to the other side of the argument ( though I cant say the same is true from the other side, given the blacklisting that recently occurred), but I see and understand what they are looking at. If I also only looked at that, I would also believe it totally. But I don’t demonize honest, hard-working people that have devoted their careers to it.  They are just as passionate in what they do, as an I.  Beyond that, there is an entire cottage industry and political movement now built around this.  I can see why it would be hard to question that authority if one was all-in on it. In the end I seek to convince no one, I merely raise some questions that many of us have, and some are afraid to ask due to  an issue that is growing larger every day; intimidation. I want people to question what they are being shown. The first place an open minded journalist can start with is the “climate justice” warriors who are weaponizing the weather.  The rain forest fires are only their latest.  The don’t talk about the tropics globally, because it is quiet and the heat has backed down.

BTW we have been forecasting the development off the Carolinas since Tuesday.  This is yet another feature out of the main development region, which is seasonal.  If this starts getting hyped, its been there, done that.

As someone who has watched and loved the weather since my first memory, there is always something happening somewhere that we used to marvel at.  Sadly there is now an agenda leading pressure groups to treat natural weather into as a case for a cause.

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