O’Reilly’s Weatherman Joe Bastardi: ‘The Globe Is Actually Cooling’
O’Reilly’s Weatherman Joe Bastardi: ‘The Globe Is Actually Cooling’
Last week, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly promoted the conspiracy theories of a weatherman who believes “the globe is actually cooling.” O’Reilly’s guest, Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, scoffed at the connection between global warming and wildfires in California. Bastardi — who has an undergraduate degree in meteorology from 1978 and no other academic credentials — went so far as to claim that “global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California”:
I’m gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally.
Watch it:
The upswelling of cold waters in the eastern Pacific, known as La Nina events (the opposite of El Nino events), is certainly a factor in California’s epic drought and unprecedented wildfires. However, what Bastardi fails to mention is that temperatures have also been unusually warm during the present drought, despite the cold La Nina airmass:
Bastardi’s claim of “global cooling” is completely unsubstantiated. Even with the upwelling of cold water during the La Nina cycle, average ocean temperatures during the “cool” years of 2006-2008 were higher than any year before 1997. It has been the warmest decade for both ocean and land temperatures in recorded history. This summer, the La Nina event was replaced by its counterpart, El Nino, and average sea surface temperatures are now at their highest in recorded history.
Bastardi also showed a graph he purported was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forecast for global temperatures to “go up, up, up” against actual temperatures “over the last 10 years” supposedly “coming down”:
| Fake IPCC Chart Claims ‘Global Cooling’ |
|---|
 |
This graph is from a climate denier conspiracy website, The Next Ice Age Now, whose proprietor Robert Felix believes global warming is actually caused by “underwater volcanism.” The graph cites SPPI — the Science and Public Policy Institute, a fringe climate denier organization. Actual IPCC estimates find measured temperatures over the past decade to be well within the range of the forecasts. Furthermore, the Ice Age Now chart begins in 2001 — not “ten years ago. Because 1999 and 2000 were relatively cool years for this decade (though extremely warm historically), their inclusion in the denier chart would have ruined the “global cooling” claim. Bastardi, like other fringe deniers, is seeing patterns that aren’t there.
In July, O’Reilly mocked “hard core right-wingers who don’t believe in global warming even though the temperature shows that the earth has warmed in the last 30 years, three times faster than the previous hundred,” saying, “you don’t debate that.” Evidently, he’s changed his mind.
Transcript:
O’REILLY: Unresolved problems segment tonight. The Obama administration believes that climate change is a front line issue, that global warming must be addressed. That pleases groups like Greenpeace who are now saying the wildfires in California are spreading quicker because of climate change. We invited Greenpeace on. First they said, “Yeah, we will come on,” and suddenly changed their minds and ran away. Joining us from State College, PA is Accuweather guy Joe Bastardi, who thinks Greenpeace wildife theory is wrong. What is going on with Greenpeace? Why didn’t they show up tonight? And is there anything to their wildfire-spreading-quickly theory?
BASTARDI: I don’t want to disparage them. They have done some good things. In this case their house of cards goes up in smoke when you compare it to the foundation of fact. I’m gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally.
And to prove to you that the globe is actually cooling, if you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their forecast was for temperatures to go up, up, up. Over the last 10 years you can see in an up and down manner they are coming down. So, there’s no question about the fact over at least the last 10 years it’s cooling.
O’REILLY: Okay. Why is the global warming movement so successful throughout the world?
BASTARDI: Well, I think people haven’t been confronted with the facts. You know, I don’t ask people to believe me. I ask people to go and arm themselves and build the facts for themselves. go look for the facts themselves. The biggest secret behind all of this is right up my alley with the tropics. You see, while the earth was supposed to be warming a little bit, the atmosphere over the tropics was supposed to really be warming up quite a bit. This is up to 30 to 50,000 feet. That would trap warmth underneath and what has actually been happening? Nada. And consequently, an inconvenient truth is tropical cyclone energy is down to record low levels not record high levels. You have to look globally.
O’REILLY: Your stats are very solid, which is why we put you on the program. But this big industry, and the president of the United States is on board on the industry, Al Gore has made $100 million from it. I don’t understand why so many people around the world just buy it. They just — like Greenpeace comes out and says okay, the California wildfires, terrible, are spreading faster because of global warming. You say that’s bull, that there is no science to back that up. I will submit to you, Joe, millions of people believe Greenpeace. They don’t even care about the data!
BASTARDI: Well, that’s a problem in society today. You’re a historian. You know the facts. You have to go back and look.
For instance, let’s take the hurricanes. Hurricanes are stronger now. Oh, is that so? How were we measuring hurricanes out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico back in 1920, 1930? When you look at a hurricane now, it’s like we have a patient tied to an IC unit. We’re constantly monitoring every single second. If you look at the strength of landfalling hurricanes, for instance, they’re no different than what they were 30, 40, 100 years ago. In fact the 1944 hurricane up along the Eastern seaboard — 600-mile-wide diameter of hurricane force winds — drove the boardwalk in Atlantic City back to Baltic Avenue.
The point of the matter is look at the history, look at the facts, go arm yourself, and then you make the call yourself.
O’REILLY: All right. That’s why Greenpeace didn’t come on the show. They knew you had the facts and they didn’t.
Common sense dictates that a trace gas needed for life on the planet would not be the cause for destroying life on the planet. Common sense dictates that what has happened before without man can happen again with man. Common sense would dictate that you not believe me, or any one else, but go look for YOURSELF.
11 Responses to “O’Reilly’s Weatherman Joe Bastardi: ‘The Globe Is Actually Cooling’”
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Joe Bastardi? I know it’s not polite, but ILMAO.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pm30-50k feet?
This guy Bastardi should know that its the oceans that act as heatsinks.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:27 pmHe has a state map of California and thinks, that this is the world?
September 15th, 2009 at 12:10 am2003 was the hottest year in Europe since we have thermometers!
And to believe, that California is the same as the whole world, is the most idiotic “science” called thesis, I ever heard!
The earth is the center of the universe, magister magnus!
Thereabout I just see, that the Californian climate table isn’t correct !
Look here:
http://www.sccoos.org/data/observations/
This site will show much more, than you need, to see that the table above is fantasy.
Wing-nut science.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:35 pmThis is the same Bastardi who’s a tropical expert. How have those hurricane season forecasts (scroll down to “Tropical Topics”) been working out for you, Joe?
September 15th, 2009 at 6:58 pmBefore you bash somebody for saying that the earth is cooling, you should be able to answer the following question: How much has the earth warmed over the past ten years?
Choose your favorite data source. At best you’ll see that global temperatures have remained roughly even. At worst, you’ll confirm Bastardi’s claim.
If you look at the numbers from HadCRU (The temperature data referenced most often by the IPCC, effectively the standard bearer for mainstream science), you’ll see that temperatures have remained roughly stable for an extended period of time.
In fact, out of the past 70+ years more than 100% of the observed warming (according to HadCRU) occurred during a 22 year period from 1976 to 1998.
It could be the case that the models are correct and, due to aerosols and random fluctuations, only 22 of the past 70 years
conform to the true underlying trend.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
So feel free to ignore publicly available data, on which the case for global warming was built, which is no longer behaving the way Al Gore said it would. But ten years from now we will still be discussing climate change.
If climate activists spend the next ten years insisting that the data is wrong (or at least a “random fluctuation”) and the theories are right, they won’t have any credibility left a decade from now.
It would be far smarter to say: “We care about the planet. We want to protect the environment. We should do what we can to help, but be willing to look at the data when our initial ideas don’t pan out”
Today’s carbon intensive economy is largely the result anti-nuclear activists. They cared about the environment. They did what they thought was right. But they were stubborn and unopen to reconsidering their position. Because of their well intentioned actions both the environment and the economy are now in bad shape.
So before you bash Bastardi, go look at the data yourself. Make sure that, out of a desire to help the environment, you aren’t spreading misinformation which will ultimately kill climate action and hurt the environment.
[BTW, what he is saying about 30k to 50k feet is this: The climate models (fairly universally) predict that MOST of the warming will be caused by water vapor feed back (i.e. more higher temperatures == more water vapor == more warming). The climate models predicted that this feedback would be especially observable in the tropics at 30k-50k feet. The data, since those predictions were made, does not support this conclusion. It's a simple (graphical) example of a prediction made by climate models which is not supported by reality. It doesn't mean that the climate models are completely useless. But it would be foolish to act as they can accurately model climate when some of their main predictions have been wrong for (in this case) a period of over two decades.]
September 17th, 2009 at 7:40 amJason – “At best you’ll see that global temperatures have remained roughly even. ” Yes indeed they have. And warmer than almost every year of the 20th century!
If global warming was not happening, if the warming from 1978 to 1998 was just a fluke, then ten years is plenty of time for that fluke to dissipate and for us to return to normal 20th century temperatures, 0.5 or so degrees lower than the present decade. It hasn’t happened.
In fact, the spike in 1998 was quite a fluke, and took us several tenths of a degree C above the warming trend that anybody expected. The IPCC expectations (partly from models, partly from many observations) of continued warming at about 0.2 degrees per decade mean that it was always expected it would take 10 years or more to break an exceptional record like the 1998 one. And yet we’ve come close in recent years (and in the GISS record, already exceeded 1998 in 2005) and there’s every expectation the next few years will see another record even higher.
Jason, if you’re right and temperatures are really back to the 20th century 0.5 C lower than now in a decade, the worst that can happen from us spending 1% or so of world GDP on clean energy for a few years is that we’ll have wasted a small fraction of the world’s economy on something we didn’t absolutely need – but we’ll still have benefits from extra coal and oil we can use, less expensively, down the road.
But what if you’re wrong? Don’t even think about the worst that can happen, think about the middle-of-the-road business-as-usual scenario, if we do nothing now and the mid-range IPCC projections are correct. Wide-spread species extinction, droughts, floods, hundreds of millions of refugees. And there are more alarming implications if things are worse than expected.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:24 pmShorter Jason:
I’ve not done the math, but if you’ve done the math for me, you’ll know that I’m right.
– bi
September 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pmAnyone who’s interested in what Bastardi was talking about with:
should read Arthur Smith’s comprehensive discussion of tropical tropospheric amplification.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:33 pmArthur Smith,
You seem to be confused.
Temperatures since 1998 have been hotter than temperatures prior to 1976.
If you innocently thought I said otherwise, then you should reread my post.
If you are deliberately attacking me for something I did not say, indeed something that contradicts the text of my post, then you are intellectually dishonest.
For the record, I don’t know to what degree greenhouse gases are contributing to the warming of the planet. I think that people who believe that climate modelers have somehow “solved” the problem of predicting the evolution of earth’s climate, despite their numerous flaws, are arrogant beyond belief (and frequently misinformed).
I expect that in a thousand years, if people are still around and remember this episode, climate sensitivity to CO2 will be shown to be positive and less than half current estimates. But I don’t know and have an open mind.
Certainly, if IPCC model estimates of climate sensitivity are even remotely accurate, then since the mid 1930s we have seen some very improbable global temperatures. At present, it seems far more probable that the models are wrong. (And frankly, folks publishing papers on models are more than happy to acknowledge myriad defficiencies in those models. They just won’t admit [with a number of exceptions] the possibility of grossly overestimating climate sensitivity.)
September 18th, 2009 at 11:48 amShorter Jason:
I’ve not done the math, but if you’ve done the math for me, you’ll know that I’m right.
In any case, in 1,000 years’ time, I expect to be proven right. But I have an open mind. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I’m proven wrong after 1,000 years, since I won’t be around.
– bi
September 20th, 2009 at 3:55 am