Thursday, March 11, 2010

When your predictions go sour, just go into denial.

One Brow, a frequent commenter on this blog, has decided to give me a lecture on logic--and science. And then, just to top it off, he adds a short critique on my use of English. His point would be more convincing if he didn't utter sentences such as this one:
It turns out his English is not nearly sufficient to warrant [Cothran's] casting of dispersion on other posters, or maybe it's his grade-school-level-science that is lacking.
Casting "dispersion"? I think he means casting "aspersion." Normally I wouldn't take note of it, but when it occurs in a passage remarking on my command of English, it's hard to ignore.

I don't mind be corrected on my use of English; I only request that those doing so speak it more competently than I.

One Brow argues that increased snowfall is not necessarily an indication of colder weather, and that therefore more snowfall is not evidence against Global Warming. But how can increased snowfall not be evidence against Global Warming if reduced snowfall is evidence for it? In fact, one of the things we've been told repeatedly is that reduced snowfall is the result of Global Warming:



What a comfortable little ideological world these people live in. Absolutely nothing counts against you! You can make all kinds of predictions, and when something completely different happens, you just shrug your shoulders and say that it doesn't matter.

And what is that about scientific theories being falsifiable? If a theory makes a prediction, and the exact opposite thing happens, in what ideological world is that not evidence against the theory that made the prediction?

Here is One Brow's argument:
Notice the slide from "the record level of snowfalls" to "individual cool weather events"? However, it snows regularly during individual warm-weather events in places like Nome (where even a warm winter day can be well below freezing), while I certainly experienced a few cold-weather events this year with no snow at all falling from the sky. The phenomena are distinct, and treating record snowfalls as indicative of cold weather is a non sequitur.
But it's the IPCC saying that Global Warming is inconsistent with increased snowfall. One Brow's argument is with them, not me.

But it's not just snowfall per se; it's also where the snowfall is happening:

As we have been discussing on WUWT, three of the last four months have seen top ten Northern Hemisphere snow extents and the decadal trend has been towards increasing (and above normal) snow extent during the autumn and winter. It appears that this month will achieve snow extent among the top two Februaries on record.

As you can see in the Rutgers University maps below for mid-February, the excess snow cover is necessarily found at lower latitudes. Snow cover radiates out from the pole, so the only place where snow extent can increase is towards the south.

The implication of the observed trend towards increasing snow extent is that the Northern Hemisphere autumn/winter snow line is moving southwards over the last ten to twenty years.

Now maybe One Brow could explain how more snow at lower latitudes is consistent with Global Warming.

1 comment:

One Brow said...

I finally wrote a response, for your consideration.