Climate change started falling early yesterday afternoon at Schloss Bodissey, and continued falling heavily all night.When I woke up this morning and opened the back door, this was what awaited me.
We now have about fifteen inches (forty cm) of global warming on the ground, with more coming down hard.
Does this mean I get to cash in a lot of carbon credits?
Seriously — I haven’t seen this much snow before Christmas since I was a kid.
Back in the late fifties and early sixties we had five or six white Christmases in row, sometimes with eight or ten inches on the ground. Then the sunspot cycle kicked in, and we went decades without seeing snow on Christmas Day.I assume we have returned to the same level of sunspots that we had forty-five years ago. I wonder how many winters like this it will take before “global warming” becomes a stale old joke?
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28 comments:
Actually sunspots have hit a record low. Lower than ever recorded in the modern era. We're in little ice-age levels of sun-non-spottiness. It's even snowing here. It almost never snows here in the north west, except maybe a few flakes, and even when it does it tends not to stick.
HOWEVER. It must be said that the mechanism that connects sunspots to climate is not well understood and studies are still ongoing. Still a more plausible mechanism than the idea that breathing out makes the planet warm up...
The excellent movie, The Cloud Mystery, about the Danish scientist who discovered the sunspot-solar wind-cosmic ray connection explains it really well. Try and find it. I would suggest searching kitmantv.blogspot.com for it.
By the way, for the first time in years there is a decent sunspot. check spaceweather.com for that. It appears to be hanging around and possibly part of a new sunspot cycle. If thats the case, we can look forward to decent weather again next spring and summer as we where indeed heading for a serious minimum, which would have been truly catastrophic. Not enough food or fuel type catastrophic. These idiots in Copenhagen do not seem to understand that global warming would be a solution to most of mans problems (more abundant and cheap food and less fuel requirements) and not a problem, which global cooling most certainly is.
Anyway congratulations to all for the new sunspot. Lets hope it is the beginning of a beautiful solar cycle.
Dear Baron,
Schloss Bodissey looks beautiful!
I'm sure the Schloss will have more fun shovelling away the global warming than Copenhagen did.
It's getting a bit globally warm here too, even froze the trains to France for 15 hours under the Channel.
Copenhagen was more about taxes and control than climate - it was a falling out among thieves!
Best wishes,
Hal
The daft thing that happened to the Eurostar was that they broke when they moved into the warmth of the tunnel. The fat that this is the first time this sort of breakdown has happened means that the relative temperature difference between the tunnel and the outside world has never been this extreme in its entire working life. Temperatures must have absolutely plummeted for that to happen.
Anyway, Copenhagen was a failure for the greenies but it was a success for the money men. They preserved and extended the existing carbon trading scheme implemented in Kyoto, and that's all it was ever about. All the talk about saving the world was... hot air!
Dear Baron,
Never mind climatology. All that snow is due to Sarah Palin.
Yes, the Sun is quiet these days:
Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically
When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.
The other reason the upper atmosphere is cooling is because of less IR radiation from the lower atmosphere in the bands where it can be absorbed.
The unseasonable coolness in England and France is interesting, especially because the seasonal sea-ice extent is much less than average. This suggests a drop in the thermohaline circulation from the Gulf Stream. That has long been projected as a consequence of melting of ice in the Arctic ocean and Greenland; the warm, salty surface waters originating in the Gulf are replaced by lighter, fresher meltwater which remains on the surface even as they get cold.
Nothing in climate science is simple.
This might be an interesting watch.
http://vimeo.com/8281048
up here closer to the DC Beltway, we've already received approximately 27 inches (70 cm?) of frozen liquid excess GHG -oops, I mean snow, and it hasn't stopped yet.
I guess Pres Obama has returned form Copenhagen...
Baron,
One of the predicted results of global warming is increased precipitation in some areas, ie more snow in some cold regions and more rain in other, warmer regions--time will tell.
Ah, but mace: that's why they call it "climate change"!
The handy thing about Orthodox Climate Change doctrine is that any observed meteorological conditions confirm the theory.
If it gets warmer, "climate change".
If it gets colder, "climate change".
More hurricanes? Climate change!
Fewer typhoons? Climate change!
Heck, they've probably jerry-rigged a model that proves that if conditions stay more or less the same, it's evidence of "climate change".
The fully-formed baroque version of AGW makes for a perfect, unfalsifiable religious belief. It's a closed logical system. It cannot be refuted. No evidence can disprove it.
Sixty or a hundred years from now we may find out that the theory is indeed correct. Or we could also discover that there were mitigating factors of which we were previously unaware that stablized the global climate system.
In any case, by then we will have destroyed all our national economies and forced ourselves into poverty and serfdom.
Maybe our grandchildren will say, "Thanks, Nana and Grampa! We're so happy you did this for us! You preserved the permafrost in Siberia and kept the Maldives above sea level! We don't mind eating bark and trapping chipmunks to survive! It was worth it!"
Or maybe not.
But, in any case, we won't be around.
Wonder if there is any strategic planning to move europeans to the african continent in the event of a mini iceage.
@4Symbols...
With a mini ice age, will "strategy" or "planning" be found anywhere? Will anything be functioning at that high a level?
It looks like we are going to have a white Christmas, for a change. Yay! The ground is all covered with snow which shimmers underfoot with its billions of tiny crystals.
Baron,
I agree with your comments,up to a point,cetainly "one swallow does not a summer make"(or something similar). However, discovering "evidence" everywhere is not confined to the supporters of AGW. A series of record droughts has occurred where I live(Australia)so something's up.Whether it's a long or short term phenomenom or anthropogenic, is, of course, the problem.
Where I disagree, is that I can't see the severe economic dislocation you suggest,if governments stir themselves to take any significant action it will be incremental and relatively painless.
My only confident prediction is an outbreak of global hypocrisy.
this is your own little place?
nice :)
Blah, here there's a huge layer of snow. I woke up a couple of days ago and there were like three inches of snow on the edge of my window. When I got home, I had to jump out of the bus over a pile of snow and almost landed on ice and slipped. lol. Now that I don't have to go out anymore, I love snow. It snowed today again and apparently it will keep snowing for a while.
But yes, I remember that when I was a tiny kid we were getting snow like we do now, then for a while we barely got any and the summers were really hot. Now we started to get snow again and the summers cooled off by a few degrees.
I was reading this Yahoo News article about Copenhagen and they were talking about the rising temperatures on Earth. Didn't these idiots check the statistics? The temperature is falling for almost a decade now. A friend made me wonder if these people really talk about this behind closed doors or they just burst out in laughter about how they fooled the majority of the ignoramus sheeple and start playing poker or something. Maybe talking about how to screw us over even more.
And if you think cooling will stop them, you're wrong. It's like all the liberal doctrines. If the Earth will cool, it will be based on how successful their pathetic policies were at stopping global warming. Just like feminism, for example, who makes women miserable by denying their nature and the more unhappy they get, the more they blame patriarchy. Or multiculturalism when they ramble about racism and they don't realize that importing millions of immigrants might cause some dissatisfaction.
Mace, Australia has always been a very dry continent. Before WWII and at the recession of the 1890's (I.e. 19th Century) drought was crippling just as bad as it is now
.
Also don't forget that now we irrigate with a lot more of the water that used to flow, and as that is used to grow plants (and to use a current buzz phrase: Sequester Carbon!) and therefore evaporates, we have less water.
On another topic of 'climate change' I love how the alarmists point to glaciers retreating as evidence of something. They forget that glaciers have a finite life, and every summer they *gasp* melt. And they can never document a glacier growing from before the time of the Industrial revolution.
Siegetower,
Of course,Australia is mostly arid and we are probably using too much irrigation for sustainability.However, the main climate change models predict that Oz will become wetter in the north and drier in the south,which is just what's happening.Coincidence? Possibly. The droughts now are more severe and of longer duration.
Yes,glaciers retreat and expand the point is - how much over each annual cycle.The current hero of the AGW 'skeptics' in Oz, is the GEOLOGIST Ian Plimer(who is best described as..er, eccentric) a geologist is not really qualified to pontificate on AGW,is that the best they can do? Where are all the climatologist skeptics?
I'll leave the subject to the experts. Since the idea of AGW came originally from the Left it's tainted as far as many conservatives are concerned,more open minds are needed.
I used to reject criticism of multiculturalism because it was initiated by right-wing commentators,I was wrong and I changed my mind.
Actually, mace, the history of concern over AGW goes back decades before today's politicized science. Historian Naomi Oreskes has traced it back to the 1950's, when what was then one of the most trusted and rigidly non-partisan groups of scientists wrote a report on it. Here's her talk on the subject, with slides (linky).
The partisan split over AGW appeared in the Reagan administration, prompted by the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) and its backers. GMI has also been on the side of the tobacco industry against health science, coal-fired powerplants against the science proving acid rain, and for continuing production of CFC's vs. the science proving damage to the ozone layer from chlorine and bromine. If you think anything from the radical left is suspect because of its record (as I am; see Yuri Bezmenov on useful idiots, and anything else by him), you'd have to be concerned about anything with GMI fingerprints on it too.
I think we should have moved forward on AGW mitigation many years ago. One of the byproducts of carbon sequestration is a great deal of CO2, and CO2 is good for enhanced oil recovery from old reservoirs. If we want to strengthen the USA's economy and weaken OPEC, we have to both cut our oil demand and supply more of it ourselves. Capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground can assist the latter goal.
Engineer-Poet,
Thanks for the link,I'll refer to it when I'm arguing with AGW skeptics here in Australia(which is a very high per capita CO2 emitter).It appears that the "skeptical" campaign really started when it appeared that politicians actually might do something to combat AGW and so threaten the profits of the coal and other hydrocarbon industries.
Obviously the amount of opposition to the AGW hypothesis is directly proportional to the influence of a country's CO2 emitting industries.
Your contention that only climatologists are qualified to comment on climatology is, I have to be frank, bull poop. Science is science. Science is scepticism. You doubt your own results. You doubt the results of others. You continually look for flaws. Science is never certain. Science assumes that there is going to be an exception found and continues to look for it. The scientific method that I learned in school is that you test, test, test and test again. You get a result, and you go back to see if it can be replicated. If it can be replicated you test it again. If it carries on being replicable you expand the conditions in which you test it to see if it still can be replicated. You begin to form a hypothesis based on the empirical data collected from your tests. If someone comes along and points out that X or Y is wrong, and they know about X or Y, and can demonstrate with a replicable test why X or Y is wrong then you tear up your hypothesis and go back to your tests.
The global warming hypothesis has been falsified numerous times by numerous scientists pointing out flaws in the hypothesis that overlap their own area of expertise. Geologists will point out that CO2 with the supposed "human" signature of C14 is produced in huge amounts by volcanoes. Statisticians will point out that using linear regression on a non-linear system will produce meaningless results and that it is impossible to model a non-linear system with multiple variables. phycicists will point out that air (including CO2) that has warmed has a tendency to go up, until it reaches a point where there is very little in the way of it radiating excess heat to space.
The models predict a tropospheric hot-spot. No hot-spot has been recorded. The models do not account for the change in cloud cover. The models do not correctly model the effects of hurricanes on sea-surface temperatures. The models do not correctly account for changes in solar input which, while minor, are still there. The models are wrong. The AGW hypothesis is wrong. CO2 does not cause run-away warming. CO2 does not cause dangerous acidification of the oceans. CO2 is plant food.
Data has been manipulated. AGW is just a money-making scam.
Ask yourself, why is it that whenever the "adjustments" made by the global warming promoters are removed, the warming trend all but disappears? Ask why it is that they make extensive use of statistical analysis, but refuse or are very reluctant to interact with experts in the field. Ask why is it that data picked from Russian monitoring stations was used only when it showed warming?
Actually, Baron, we don't have to destroy our economy to deal with alleged global warming. I suggest you read $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better, written by a staff writer for that notorious socialist journal Forbes, to see how reducing dependence on fossil fuels will be done in an economically sound way.
From tonight's UK TV listings: "CATASTROPHE Man on Earth Channel 4, 9pm Continuing his exploration of the fates that befell various ancient civillisations as a result of violent climate change, tonight Tony Robinson looks at the downfall of three great civillisations - the Maya, the Vikings and the cliff-dwelling Puebloans of North America."
Graham, you keep saying that the models show a hot spot, but you are the ONLY person I have ever heard this from. I'd like to see you back this up with sources which do not come from the denial industry. I'm especially suspicious of your sources because of your claim about volcanoes, which is a complete falsehood. As the article at the link shows, even a cursory glance at the Keeling curve vs. the most elementary knowledge of recent volcanic activity shows that the claim is 100% pure bovine effluent.
You are taking seriously something which is easily proven to be a lie. Why aren't you curious enough to research these things, and why do you believe statements of people who are lying to you to advance their own interests (mostly likely against yours)?
By definition you cannot "replicate" a climate result in the sense you are using the word. There is no way to conduct controlled experiments on the atmosphere of the Earth; we only have one of them and there is no way to wind it back to the original conditions for another run. What we can do is build better models of the physical systems and see how well they repeat history. In that sense, the current models are pretty good.
One of the reasons it's hard to account for clouds is because the behavior of clouds is strongly affected by the type and quantity of condensation nuclei, and those are in turn affected by human activity. We do know that contails have a large effect on the daily temperature range, dimming and cooling during the day and warming at night. The Asian Brown Cloud has effects we don't understand very well yet. But if you only read the denialists, you will learn none of these things. Instead, you'll be told that "it's all a conspiracy". Never mind that the leftist slant of the policy responses are entirely due to the capitalist-types abandoning the field and leaving a vacuum in the market of ideas... well, that serves denialists too.
A real counterjihadist would note that the only thing Islamist nations have to offer is carbon-based fuels, and that's the way to attack them. The denialist industry is probably in the pay of Saudi Arabia; we already know that CERA, which long claimed that oil supplies wouldn't peak for decades, has been KSA's butt-buddy.
On the CO2, I'm glad to be proven wrong on the sources, but that doesn't change the fact that the forcing mechanisms used in the models don't match up to reality without a lot of tweaking and magic numbers. The simple fact is, AGW is not falsifiable, therefore it is not science. Everything is claimed to be a result of AGW. Of course then you talk about a "denialist industry" and then go on to claim that I'm not a real anti-jihadist so I don't think I'll bother any more, as you're obviously too attached too the models to understand that a model is not reality and is not a replacement for empirical observation. Given the generally lax quality of the temperature data and the fact that the leading lights of the AGW "industry" (see, I can throw epithets around as well!) spent the better part of two decades obstructing any attempt to examine the methods they used to arrive at their homogenised data and their final conclusions, I'm not sure how you can claim to be an engineer by your name and still consider it to be anything but a pack of lies.
Regarding the hotspot, I cite nothing less than chapter 9.2.2 of the IPCC fourth assessment report here, which considers a tropospheric hotspot to be a unique signature of anthropogenically generated global warming. No such hotspot exists.
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