Jerry Mahlman: Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things
Jerry Mahlman: Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things
I found out this week at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union that my friend Jerry Mahlman died in late November. Jerry was a climate scientist, and for many years, the Director of the Geophysical Fluids Dynamics Laboratory. Here is the announcement of his death, which includes a paragraph about his science life. Here is Rick Piltz's, Remembering Jerry Mahlman.
In 2003 Jerry and I hatched a plan to road trip to Big Bend National Park. Jerry liked to “bushwhack” across desolate places, and in the Lower 48, Big Bend National Park is about as remote and desolate as it gets. Big Bend is also home to a huge variety of wildlife. The wildlife is there not only because it is protected desolation, but also because its climate straddles the edge of the tropics. This means birds, and birds could be the noble goal of any Jerry adventure.
The retired Jerry set out to planning. Another flavor of road trip brought me to his house in Longmont, Colorado, and Jerry had collected a set of suitably obscure information about the places in the Larry McMurtry world through which we would venture. There would be counties where there might be 4 rooms for those passing through – identify such opportunity in advance. Jerry had descriptions that required us to pay attention to the juniper trees on the side of road at the curve 31 miles from the U.S. highway intersection. Beyond the juniper, there would be pull out and a path, and down that path, a gully, and in that gully, the footprint of a dinosaur.
The week before we were on our way, Jerry had his stroke. The rational, though perhaps without fully thinking it through – the rational Jerry called me to explain that despite the type and severity of a stroke that normally killed more than 99% of the time, he was certain that by the time I arrived in three days, he would be ready to go. He had tested his readiness, by standing and walking. Though he was dizzied and tired by more than a few steps, he was certain that by the time we arrived in Big Bend his recovery would be adequate. As a precaution we would limit our exposure to steep trails and sheer cliffs.
That trip never happened. After recovery and therapy Jerry and I did take a set of road trips into the easy hinterlands of Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. We would frequently pass through Fort Collins, and he would talk about his time with Janet during graduate school. On one of the trips beyond Colorado’s Moose Viewing Capital, Walden, we happened upon a “nature” trail on, probably, Bureau of Land Management leased land. The nature trail was maintained by an oil interest, and had signs that talked about the natural warming caused by carbon dioxide, and how the oil industry removed carbon dioxide from the air, pumping it into to the ground to release, safely, more oil to be pumped. Recycling carbon dioxide.
In his backyard Jerry kept something of a rock garden, perhaps more in the style of corralled rocks than, say, the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. In 2008 with Jerry’s short-term memory loss starting to become prominent, we set out to Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico. The noble goal was large round rocks spewed from a volcano. We hiked in the National Monument, and collected large round rocks from a rancher’s field, and then set off through the dirt roads of northern New Mexico and southeastern Colorado. We drove the entire length of the Dry Cimarron River, wandering onto roadside rock crumbles and into easy gullies. We crossed the grasslands, through the windmills and settlements that are relics from the Dust Bowl. We visited dimly lit, small-town museums that were housed in repurposed general stores and gas stations. We tried to use, whenever possible, Colorado Highway 71, which ran north into Nebraska to his hometown of Crawford, and beyond to Janet’s hometown of Hot Springs, South Dakota.
Jerry Mahlman in a gully of the Dry Cimarron River, New Mexico, 2008
Our last trip was in 2009 - too early for a last trip, but lives get complicated. It was October. We started up over mountains in Wyoming, but the roads were closed to our demure vehicle. So we hiked Vedauwoo Rocks, and then we went down a barren Wyoming road that had remained solidly anchored in Jerry’s memory. We ate at a Chinese restaurant, in a town that met the required criterion of at least two Chinese restaurants – to assure some quality from competition. The hot and sour soup passed muster. The Scoville Scale was unchallenged.
From that common place where it was understood that is was OK to be Ricky, not Richard – to Jerry.
ricky
Jerry Mahlman at Vedawoo, Wyoming, 2009
Reader Comments
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Sorry to hear about your friend Jerry Mahlman......
I like the hesitant resolve he expressed in a 2003 interview with the New York Times:
"I don't like having to talk to people about something they don't particularly want to hear," he said in an interview, "but I see what the climate models are telling us. I think by ignoring projections on global warming, we are making a negative gift to our successors -- human, animal and plant -- of enormous dimension."
Indeed.
Being a white-haired geezer myself, I realize that my most strenuous adventuring days are over. Like your friend Jerry, I hope I have a friend like you in the future to take me out and about for gentle walks and hikes in the wild places that I love to visit. At age 71, my balance, strength and stamina are not what they once were, and I expect that they will continue to decline in the coming years.
392.92ppm
Atmospheric CO2 for November 2012
co2now.org
Georg C. Lichtenberg
You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.
Chuck Yeager
Link
Weintrobe, Sally (2012-10-12). Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New Library of Psychoanalysis 'Beyond the Couch' series) (p. 186). Taylor & Francis.
The book has to much phychobabble (no surprise there), but each author it seems to me alludes to the fact that it is time for the human race to acknowledge that we are mortal animals dependent completely on our mother, and part of the larger ecosystem.
They never do explain how they intend to get 7 billion of us into analysis.
Some of you may have never read this guy:
Kingsnorth
Greer - brilliant as usual.
Making the period Dec-Nov plus 0.53 or in 9th place. Didn't Jim Hansen say 2012 would be the warmest ever, I believe he did in 2010. Jim Hanson epic fail
I wonder if he would like a towel to wipe the egg off his face before he enjoys his Crow
As I've said before, failing with one "gotcha!" after another just isn't working for you; it may be time you try another tactic, don't you think?
I am not sure what Goddard has to do with this. I did not get the info there. I never have gotten info from any bias site. I know it is the only place you can find your info but those sites on either side are for ham and eggers such as yourself.
As far as this year being the warmest whatever this is also untrue. It can not be statistically proved. Could it be? yes, could it not be? yes
nymore,
This particular post of Dr. Rood's is no place for that brand of rhetoric. This is a remembrance, and not a climate science discussion. I would strongly suggest you take your offensive propaganda elsewhere.
Bad form, sir. Very bad form.
Here is a term I have mentioned before on this blog some of you may want to get familiar with it is called HYPOCRISY
BTW I remember something about sticks and stones. LOL
I will sleep fine thank you.
Nea, thanks for his quote.
We can only hope to be as important in our work and as modest in our demeanor.
Now comes this new study about arctic temps.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L23705, 5 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL054244
On the statistical significance of surface air temperature trends in the Eurasian Arctic region
Key Points
1) I am using a novel method to test the significance of temperature trends
2) In the Eurasian Arctic region only 17 stations show a significant trend
3) I find that in Siberia the trend signal has not yet emerged
C. Franzke
British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge, UK
This study investigates the statistical significance of the trends of station temperature time series from the European Climate Assessment & Data archive poleward of 60N.
The trends are identified by different methods and their significance is assessed by three different null models of climate noise.
All stations show a warming trend but only 17 out of the 109 considered stations have trends which cannot be explained as arising from intrinsic climate fluctuations when tested against any of the three null models.
Out of those 17, only one station exhibits a warming trend which is significant against all three null models. The stations with significant warming trends are located mainly in Scandinavia and Iceland.
There has been no legitimate debate about the existence of AGW since the early 1970's. People have been paid to lie, people have lied because they thought it would help their bottom line, and there are the psychopaths, the stupid, and the delusional. But the scientific debate ended decades ago.
And their are consequences.
People are dying because of AGW.
It is a crime against humanity to spread lies that are designed to cause people to die. (Never mind that we are living in the greatest extinction event since the Permian.) When one group of people kill off large numbers of others, what is that called genocide? or just mass murder?
MEANWHILE:
WUG is the biggest clearinghouse for denialist propaganda on the web, and is therefore reinforcing the myth of an AGW debate.
That is a serious charge, lets parse out the sentence:
biggest? Yup. WUG gets more clicks than any other weather site.
clearinghouse? Yup. If you want to find out what the latest lie coming out of the denial industry is, do you check wattsup etc.? No! All you have to do is come to WUG and the lies will be here.
denialist propaganda? Read (or rather dont bother reading) the insulting, odious, inaccurate, nonsensical things the denialists have posted as comments to the eulogy above.
After it is too late, people will wonder where we were, and what we were doing. Some will say that they were on the wrong side of the politics, and some will be forced to admit that they sold their soul for a few mouse clicks.
Thanks for asking.
Been busy lately evaluating scholarship applications for a local charity. There are so many desreving youngsters that deserve the chance to pursue their dreams. When you evaluate some of these applications, learning about family economic situations as well as the students aspirations, you need to have a box of kleenex nearby.
Other than that, I'm just kind of lurking on the various Climate change blogs until I have time to contribute something meaningful.
Mother Nature Is Just Getting Warmed Up: Record-Smashing Early December Assures 2012 Will Be Hottest In U.S. History
By Joe Romm on Dec 13, 2012 at 8:12 pm
We’ve had spring weather in early December — and that guarantees 2012 will be the hottest year on record for the United States.
I had reported on Monday that 2012 was virtually certain to be the hottest on record thanks to the warm November and blistering early December. Now Climate Central has done the math:
There is a 99.99999999 percent chance that 2012 will be the hottest year ever recorded in the continental 48 states, based on our analysis of 118 years of temperature records through Dec. 10, 2012.
The chart above is Climate Central’s projection of the 2012 temperature using observations through December 10 and an estimate of typical temperatures for the final 21 days of the month. If this holds true, then 2012 will blow out the previous record (1998) by more than 1°F.
How warm was early December? As Capital Climate calculates using National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) figures:
For the first 10 days of December, new daily record high temperatures have outnumbered record lows by a ratio of 92 to 1. For the 48 contiguous states, the ratio was an incredible 132 to 1, since 3 out of the 10 low records were in Alaska and Hawaii. During the entire week of December 2-8, not a single low temperature record was tied or broken in any of the 50 states, according to NCDC reports. With 3 weeks remaining in the year, the cumulative ratio of heat records to cold records for 2012 has reached 6.0 to 1, more than double the ratio in 2011.
Try the AGU You Tube site for many interesting videos of news conferences and presentations.
People are dying and there is no sense of urgency to fix it...
I have told you how to cool it.... Ignore my idea and there will be more warming...
I wanted to hear Dr.Rood's take on it so I can comment here...
Link
Is this what you are talking about?
"RF from the well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHG) has increased by 0.20 ± 0.02 W m–2 (8%) since
AR4 (2005) due to increased concentrations. The RF of WMGHG is 2.83 ± 0.28 W m–2. Of the 0.20 W m–23
24 2 increase since AR4, 0.01 W m–2 is due to updates in the RF calculations and the rest due to concentration changes, mainly from increases in CO2. The industrial era RF for CO2 alone is 1.82 ± 0.18 W m–2 and is virtually certain the strongest component causing a positive RF since 1750. Over the last 15 years, CO2 has clearly been the dominant contributor to the increase in RF from the WMGHG, with RF of CO2 having an average growth rate slightly less than 0.3 (0.27 ± 0.03) W m–2 per decade."
RF is radiative-forcing
9:27 PM GMT on December 14, 2012
If I chose to pick out a quote and put it in a comment on a blog it might be ...
"Over the last 15 years, CO2 has clearly been the dominant contributor to the increase in RF (Radiative Forcing) from the WMGHG (Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gases), with RF of CO2 having an average growth rate slightly less than 0.3 (0.27 ± 0.03) W m–2 per decade."
or another one ... if I were to pick 2
"There is very high confidence that natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing. In particular, over the past three decades (since 1980), robust evidence from satellite observations of the TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) and volcanic aerosols demonstrate a near-zero (–0.04 W m–2) change in the natural forcing compared to the anthropogenic AF increase of ~1.0 ± 0.3 W m–2.
AF = Adjusted Forcing = Change in net irradiance at the TOA (Top of the Atmosphere) after allowing for atmospheric temperatures, water vapour, clouds and land
albedo to adjust, but with all or a portion of surface conditions unchanged.
:-)
That is why I am still the Rookie.
I bet if Exxon, BP or ......... tried this we would never hear the end of it.
Come on Enviros. you are showing your true colors as frauds you are.
Edited: I forgot to add the US govt let them have the land and just to pour salt in the wound they don't have to pay taxes because it is tribal land.
1,200 tons of GHG'S per second emitted into our atmosphere ~37,800,400,000 TONS PER YEAR. We can't survive this.... Build my tunnels now......
Perhaps you should read the entire report rather than, as most on this blog write, "cherry-pick." I suppose that warmists are now going to be called "deniers" after this report becomes public. Let the spinning begin. The point of my argument is that the supposed "gods" of global warming science have absolutely no idea what is really occurring. Your idols left you blowing in the wind. The liberal colleges that actually instituted "climate change" curricula might be forced to change the titles of the classes to "climate stagnation in the face of rising emissions". Look at the IPCC's own graph. Where is the warming?
Link
Where did Little Anthony find that graph? Just where did the graph originate from?
I followed the links under his, "Here is the caption for this figure from the AR5 draft:"
Is the graph here?
Perhaps it is here?
How about here?
Well, that is all of the links that Anthony gave us. I did not see that graph on any of the links. Did you? So, where did the graph come from? When I try to search for it the results are to Anthony's blog or any number of other blogs that link back to Anthony's blog. How odd.
Then little Anthony tells us to ignore the gray bars in the graph "because they flubbed the definition of them". Why does he not tell us what the "flub" was? Did I miss his telling us what the "flub" is? Help me out here. Show me where Anthony describes the "flub", please.
Then he polls his faithful. Guess how that went. Can you guess? Did you take the poll yourself?
What say ye to all of this?
(So far as his silly "poll": it doesn't properly address the reality, does it? He only has options for "above the model scenario ranges", "below the model scenario ranges", and "in the middle of the model scenario ranges". It's typical of him not to have an option for "within the model scenario ranges", which is, of course, where temps have been, and where they are headed.)
What a blathering, blithering, bleating buffoon...
Can you please provide evidence for an on going La Nina
It would seem just the opposite with a neutral warm bias
Lets check shall we
Lets use your own words to describe what you claimed Blathering, blithering, bleating buffoon. The idiot/liar (your words again) debunked again. Have a good weekend Old Friend
3:37 PM GMT on December 15, 2012
You perhaps missed the more subtle point that said - If I were to pick 1 quote ... This was perhaps part of the message ....
Now that you have provided 1, taken out of context, posed as a counterexample, with a set of challenges that are in the spirit of boasting ... I remind others
Form of Argument: Adventures in Rhetoric
As for the surface temperature plot, It's not getting warmer again! Really?
Dr. Rood. I know that you are a very busy person, but I greatly appreciate when you are able to offer your knowledge in these discussions. I always look forward to reading any information that you can provide for us.
Thank you!
Hint one concerns drought and the two other include Sandy.
Now I know where some on here get their lying ways from their fraud of a hero.
PopSci.com
So I was relieved to learn that Beck did not actually write the book. In her recent article “I got duped by Glenn Beck!” (Salon.com, November 19), Sarah Cypher--the editor for an early draft of the book--revealed that Agenda 21 was in fact ghost-written by one Harriet Parke. Beck, it turns out, simply purchased the right to claim he’d written the book. Possessing an even lower opinion now of Mr. Beck, but satisfied there was no longer any conflict of interest, I proceeded to read the book with as open a mind as I could muster.
It resembles a collision between The Matrix, Soylent Green, and Atlas Shrugged.
I do agree with you that we are not seeing a La Nina at the present. (model runs I have seen on Dr. Master's blog favor the return of a La Nina event) You should also admit that we have not seen an El Nino event since the early months of 2010. The last El Nino lasted for about 6 months at that time. Since the last El Nino we have seen a strong to weak La Nina and for the past few months have seen a weak to flat El Nino in place. While this is not a persistent La Nina, it is also not a return to El Nino either.
I have a question for any that may know. I remember Levi32 stating this past summer that all the indications were showing that El Nino had returned last summer. He even claimed that we would not be seeing these other conditions without an El Nino being in place. Yet an El Nino never formed. Here is my question. Why did all indications show that an El Nino had returned when, in fact, an El Nino event never actually formed?
Why not just tell us what false statements Mann had made and then show us your evidence that proves them false.
Deniers, enjoy it while you have it.
He states that it comes from the AR5 draft. Since it is denoted as Figure 1.4, I would expect that it comes from Chapter 1. If you'd like to verify the authenticity of the graph, you can find the download links for the AR5 draft at WUWT as well as several other Google-searched links.
The three links you refer to as being given by Anthony are said to be given in the caption of the figure itself, according to the post, and are not sources for the graph.
Looks like 2012 is a neutral ENSO year overall. Despite this, I know I've seen 2012 as being mentioned as the "warmest La Niña year ever". The graph in your post is a good counter for that claim.
Exactly! Why do you think that I asked for the graph that Little Anthony displays to be sourced. Are you able to source this graph beyond what Little Anthony has sourced it? I am interested in seeing the source of this graph. This something that Little Anthony should have done, but only vaguely did so. Help Little Anthony out. Properly source it for him, please.
As far as finding a link on Little Anthony's blog to download the AR5 draft goes, I did not see it. Would you mind highlighting this for me? - WUWT AR5 draft "bombshell"
Here is a Link
Rookie as far as Mann, watch it and see if you can find them. One of them even Jeff Masters says is wrong.
I had to watch it again just to make sure and I am now up to 4 falsehoods
Thank you! Now I know the source. Can you also show me the "flub" that "they" made in defining the gray bars?
As far as Mann is concerned, would not the conversation flow faster if you just pointed out his wrong statements and why they are wrong? Also, not that is actually relevant to the discussion, do you know of anyone that has not made a mistake in their remarks? .... I mean besides you and me. :-) .... and I am becoming suspect of you. :-)
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