Oops!

Damn, server ate my reply. I will eviscerate your ignorance and avoidance of the actual post topic later, if I can spare the time. I'm not the one in need of remedial anything--I was a governmental reviewer for IPCC4 and am quite aware of the shortcomings of the enormously flawed executive summary and the elegant-yet-reality-challenged modeling. I've written about them at some length here and elsewhere.

I will note that citing your decades-old Budyko volumes as support for anything other than your own psuedo-religious fundamentalist zeal is about as impressive as Mormons waving early Parley Pratt tracts at me as "proof" of the golden plates and the Angel Moroni.

First off, the oceans will lag in cooling. Second, the land masses that show the most heating are also areas that are suffering from increased desertification from developmental pressures and urban growth. Third, who ever put those maps together was not a cartographer or they really did want to lie with maps. The Mercator projection used exaggerates the area with the some of the highest temperature changes (closer to the poles) because the of distortion of actual area.

The reason for the idea of sun cooling is coming into play from an extended minimum. As I also said, there is a lag in ocean response. Any reduction in solar radiation is going to take a couple of years to feed into ocean temps due to the stronger ability of water to hold heat when compared to air. Global SST anomalies have actually been normal to below normal the last two years. In some cases, they were well below normal. http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html

I do not deny the data. What I do deny is that without any doubt warming is manmade. What I question is the extent to which mans influence is being assigned and the cause. I feel that urban growth and urban heat island effects are an under accounted for influence. Take this article on the effects of urban growth on climate in China. Many of the land areas in the study you posted that showed high increases are also regions of increased desertification by human causes and urban growth.

As far as meteorology and geography, I should remind you that meteorology and climatology are not the same. Plus, I think I am just fine with my understanding of geography.

Late edit: I did not realize he had this work online already. Dr. Elsner is one of my graduate professors. He specializes in hurricane climatology. Here is his latest peer-reviewed papers on the impact of the solar cycle on tropical cyclone activity in the GOM and Caribbean.

Another cartographic critique. I've been looking at GISS data and noticed a lot of the public map are using 1200KM smoothing of data. That causes huge distortions over areas with sparse or no data. Heck, that will flatten mountain ranges or extend mountain ranges depending on station location. I ran numbers at a smaller (but still excessive, IMHO) 250KM range and saw my delta T anomaly temperature change by .5 degrees centigrade for global. A 1200KM smoothing extrapolation looks nice for presentation purposes but is complete garbage for scientific purposes. If I could get away with that much extrapolation error in my studies, I would never have to work hard to find the correct answer. GIS is a dangerous tool when used incorrectly.

did our dubious energy policy cost?
How many trllions have been spent on imported oil and wars that could go to improving and saving lives in this country over the past 30 years?

Funny, well maybe not, how so many people in regular-sized cars get killed in SUV multi-collision accidents because of those offset bumpers.

CAFE stds kill but in a different way than you imply.

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE M. DITLOW

DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR AUTO SAFETY

On Reforming the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards
Before the

SENATE COMMITTEE on COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION

Washington DC December 6, 2001
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the safety aspects of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for passenger cars and light trucks. The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) is a consumer group founded in 1970 that works to improve motor vehicle safety, fuel economy and quality.

CAS has supported and testified in favor of stringent motor vehicle fuel economy standards since the first hearings held by Congress in 1974 on what became the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). Our position on safety and fuel economy has been constant over time: the technology exists to improve both the safety and fuel economy of motor vehicles.

In 1971, CAS criticized the original VW Beetle as one of the most unsafe vehicles ever built and pointed out that it didn?t have to be that way. It no longer is. The 2001 new Beetle is about 25% more fuel efficient than the old Beetle and is dramatically safer in both NHTSA frontal and IIHS offset crash tests.

The Beetle is not alone. Prior to CAFE, there were many models that weighed less than 2,000 pounds. The only vehicle under 2,000 pounds today is the Suzuki Vitara, which is an SUV. The 1,800 pound Civic of the mid-1970?s now weighs 2,600 pounds and gets 40-mpg versus 32-mpg. The Civic went from failing NHTSA 35-mph crash tests to getting 5 stars. The Pinto got replaced by the Escort; the Chevette by the Nova. All get better fuel economy and all are safer.

Overall, except for rollover performance, the inherent safety of passenger cars built to meet the 27.5 mpg CAFE standard is twice that of the older, heavier, more guzzling cars of the 1970's.1 Yet, despite the talk about the possibility that fuel economy might compromise safety, neither the auto industry nor the government has made safety a real priority then or now. We were not pushing the safety technology envelope in the mid-1970's and we are not pushing it now.

When one considers road transportation generally, the disparity in the weights of vehicles is much more important to occupant safety than the average weight of all vehicles sharing the road.
Furthermore, specific design features that affect the inherent safety of individual vehicles and their compatibility when they collide, often play a more important role than the weights of the individual vehicles. In the passenger car fleet, the disparity in vehicle weight has decreased dramatically.

Cars with inertia weights less than 2,500 pounds made up 10.8% of the 1975 new car fleet but only 2.6% of the model year 2000 cars. In contrast, passenger cars over in the 4,500 pound weight class and above made up 50% of the 1975 new car fleet but only 0.9% of the 2000 model new cars.

----------------------

These data suggest several conclusions that will help in considering the potential impact of future changes in vehicle fuel economy on safety. The major increase in LTVs used as substitutes for passenger cars in the vehicle fleet has kept the number of light vehicle occupant fatalities from falling as much as other crash statistics. The increased use of LTVs as substitutes for private passenger vehicles has produced at least 2,000 additional rollover fatalities annually.

The greater number of LTVs in the U.S. fleet has increased passenger car occupant fatalities in crashes with LTVs by more than 50 percent while passenger car occupant fatalities in crashes with other passenger cars decreased by nearly 50 percent. The consequence is that light vehicle occupant fatalities in two-vehicle crashes went down only about 10 percent while fatalities in single-vehicle crashes went down more than 25 percent from 1979 to 1999. This reduction was driven by a 45 percent reduction in passenger car single-vehicle crash fatalities. Two-vehicle crashes would have killed nearly 1,000 fewer people without the major increase in LTVs as passenger car substitutes.

more at
http://www.autosafety.org/2001-senate-cafe-testimony