Friday, February 12, 2010
Snow in all 50 states?
If snow falls on the Florida Panhandle, as expected, the white stuff will be on the ground in all 50 states. Is there a record of this happening before?
Weather is not climate, but dude, where is my global warming?
MORE: All 50.
25 Comments:
By 
JPMcT, at
Sat Feb 13, 12:13:00 AM:
When Katrina hit...it was due to Global Warming. The science was settled. The lobby predicted massive storms and action movies followed.
When the storms failed to appear, the media was mute and the movies, thankfully, stopped.
When there was a slight decrease in polar ice in a small section of the frozen wasteland, it was due to Global Warming. The science was settled. Polar Bears were made an endangered species (while their numbers thrived), Patirck Kennedy said it would NEVER show in Washington DC again and The UN predicted that the Himalayan Glaciers would disappear in 20 years.
When the Polar ice failed to go away, the Himalayan glaciers failed to cooperate and Washington got 30 inches of snow, the silence resumed.
But...
Now the NY Times and MSNBC tell us that the freezing weather and snow is due to Global Warming.
...I'm confused....
Have we always been at war with Eastasia...or is it Eurasia???
By 
, at
Sat Feb 13, 12:51:00 AM:
It's the year of the Tiger.
M.E.
By John, at
Sat Feb 13, 02:02:00 AM:
All 50 states...very interesting. Next thing we have to look forward to are all the floods from all the snow. That, like the snow, rain, sunshine, and wind, will be the fault of "global warming."
By Don Cox, at
Sat Feb 13, 04:44:00 AM:
What were the January temperatures like in Alaska and Canada this year?
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 06:24:00 AM:
It seems to me that you guys love to engage in team cynicism. How much of the science have you actually read? "Global warming" is a poor title for the changes happening, but not totally illogical. Global temperatures, on average, are rising. The RESULT is highly altered weather patterns - which could mean extreme cold or hot, storms or drought. The world is one giant system - everything connected. But you appear to be intelligent, so you must already know this. I just have to assume you act like ignorant doubters for the entertainment of negative bonding.
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 08:59:00 AM:
" Global temperatures, on average, are rising. "...And have been for several millenia, since before the number of humans, the total number of humans, exceeded the current population of say New York City.
Couple this with the embarassing, to anyone with ethics or morals, disclosure regarding the Himilayan glaciers. Then include the exposure of IPCC proclamations based on opinion papers from the World Wildlife Fund, whom have zero, or less, climate experience. Add to that data that, despite 3 years of effort by an insider and experienced programmer, cannot be made to corroborate the current hypothesis held by the CRU or the IPCC, via the released e-mails. Include the many efforts by the CRU crew to hide,destroy,and/or fabricate data. The efforts to discredit and quash any, any, paper or publication that questioned the hypothesis of global warming. Despite the lying,misdirection and outright fraud of those proponents of global warming, despite all of that and more. You defame those whom have doubts and reservations, those whom have questions the answers to which have been refused. You willfully ignore all of that ? I suggest that you take your small minded, herd mentality elitism and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Presuming you can get up there next to your head. The science isn't settled, there is little evidence that science was ever involved with this rubbish. The collusion amongst the proponents, the active effort by them to refuse any outside review, the direct effort to keep any "peer" oversight amongst those whom were proponents and\or beneficieries screams, screams cover up. Questioning these people isn't denial, it's a duty. A duty arrived because, exactly because of all of their behaviours and contortions and fabrications.
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 09:03:00 AM:
To anonymous at 6:24 am:
Here is why I am a "doubter".
http://sonicfrog.net/?p=2849
And from a reading of history, there is also the Roman warming period when vineyards flourished in England; followed by the invasion of the barbarians (my ancestors) who were "pushed" west by unknown climate events that resulted in "pressure" to migrate.
What caused the climate to change in these historical periods; since AGW could not have been a cause?
What caused the shrinking of the Ice that allowed other ancestors to migrate from what is now Portugal and Spain to Britain?
Can you explain those climate change events? or do you deny that they occured?
By TOF, at
Sat Feb 13, 09:08:00 AM:
Anonymous:
Clearly you are a member of the Church of Climate Change. The mistake you and your ilk make is to assume that whatever you experience in a short interval of your lifetime is a clear indication of climate change -- and it must be human-caused. You haven't lived long enough. You can't live long enough. You have no comparison point to make a personal judgement about the current or past climates. Furthermore, the science if far from settled. I know an atmospheric scientist (yes, he has a Ph.D. in that area). I ask him on occasion about the current state of modeling the weather. So far the answer is consistent: we don't know enough about how the whole planet functions in the formation of weather, and the models do not have the resolution to say what, if anything is causing what we percieve as climate change.
I was talking to my brother a week or so ago. We both agree that this winter is like the ones we experienced sixty years ago. He said that he recalls snow on his birthday every year back then. His birthday is 2 November.
Weather is not climate. Weather is the real manifestation that is distilled into climate via statistical analysis. Climate is statistics and statistical output is highly dependent on sample size and the accuracy of the data themselves. Weather data is notoriously inaccurate and all the massaging that has been done in these various studies have done nothing more than produce results the "scientist" wanted to see.
By JPMcT, at
Sat Feb 13, 10:13:00 AM:
Those who prefer facts to political correctness will always be mocked as "denialists" or "doubters", "skeptics" or, as the case may be, "infidels".
I don't expect these pinheads to begin to see the light when observation doesn't correlate with their speculation.
Hell, it took three hundred years for Galileo to get an apology.
I can wait.
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 10:14:00 AM:
Can anyone doubt there is climate change? Is anyone really arguing that climate is static? Of course not, for that would be foolish. But there are exactly no persuasive arguments that the existence of our species and/or our economy has had any impact on the earth's climate.
Climate science cannot describe the baseline of climate change. Climate science cannot even describe climate change in a functional manner, so that reliable mathematical models of the future can be built. For anyone to claim that climate science has a set of theories, provable from experimentation, that can show human impact on baseline climate change is not just foolish, or simple transparent arrogance, it's also very definitely not science.
It's a faith, and maybe it's a religion if you add in dogma ("peer reviewed"!), shamans (Michael Mann, perhaps), ceremony (have members of the church developed ceremony? Earth Day celebrations, perhaps?).
Anyway, it's not science whatever it is.
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 11:12:00 AM:
"The world is one giant system - everything connected."
We agree on this. I think what Team Cynic objects to are the claims by some that they know enough about the mechanics of this system to predict the future, evaluate that, and then engineer a change to a different outcome, which they know to be better.
Team Cynic is an apt and delightful way to describe the assortment here because for the most part folks here are literally suspicious of the motives of some advocates for some issues.
M.E.
By Don Cox, at
Sat Feb 13, 02:23:00 PM:
"there is also the Roman warming period when vineyards flourished in England"
People have been growing grapes and making wine in England since the 1960s.
By Brian, at
Sat Feb 13, 03:19:00 PM:
As for where's the global warming, I suggest you consider the globe:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/january-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-72-deg-c/
January 2010 is the warmest January in the satellite record.
Or did you mean where is the global warming on the globe? Try this:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/january-2010-global-tropospheric-temperature-map/
A cold spot on the East Coast of the US, while most of the world is hot.
Spencer, btw, is generally considered sympathetic to skeptics, and his data set the one that has showed the least warming.
Nope, nothing to see here.
(Yes, weather from one month isn't climate, but it's a hell of a lot better data than snowfall in a small percent of the globe.)
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 04:26:00 PM:
Brian's arguments prove only that pusillanimous ignorance, repeated frequently, adds up to the best arguments the AGW devotees can put forth.
No science at all, and reason never applied.
By , at
Sat Feb 13, 05:35:00 PM:
Aloha, I am looking at Mauna Kea now: there no snow in Hawaii this year yet; also, in the local paper the article this morning was: snow today in 49 states (not Hawaii). Look up Mauna Kea webcam for live view ...
By JPMcT, at
Sat Feb 13, 09:26:00 PM:
I wish I were looking at Mauna Kea now myelf...in stead of my frozen front yard in Virginia.
The Mauna Kea Ski Club is going to have a bad year until El Nino settles down. Maybe the snow goddess will wake up later in February.
By Brian, at
Sun Feb 14, 01:04:00 AM:
Anon, I think the use of big words constitutes the internet commenter version of "all hat, no cattle."
To recap, TH discussed snow in 49, maybe 50 states and asked where the global warming was. I gave my response. If there's something wrong with my response, I'm interested to hear about it.
By JPMcT, at
Sun Feb 14, 09:54:00 AM:
"January 2010 is the warmest January in the satellite record."
Set the temp scale on a sensitivity of 100,000 years and see how significant the little blip is.
It's the old "Frogs with no legs are deaf" scenario.
By , at
Sun Feb 14, 10:02:00 AM:
The face is, you really aren't "interested to hear it". That's just a for-show piece of BS, because your mind is totally closed. As i said earlier,
Climate science cannot describe the baseline of climate change. Climate science cannot even describe climate change in a functional manner, so that reliable mathematical models of the future can be built. For anyone to claim that climate science has a set of theories, provable from experimentation, that can show human impact on baseline climate change is not just foolish, or simple transparent arrogance, it's also very definitely not science.
Prove me wrong.
By Brian Schmidt, at
Sun Feb 14, 10:55:00 AM:
JP- as far as one month of data is concerned, I agree with you. My point is that the current weather that TH talked about is much better support for AGW than the contrary.
Anon - I guess it's a shame that I'm so close-minded, but if you still think TH's example was better than mine, maybe others who are less close-minded than me could still benefit.
As for your (apparent) quote, it sounds like a null hypothesis that someone could try and prove themselves. In any event, disproving a null hypothesis like you requested isn't possible. Climate science does however describe why we are not currently living on a frozen planet and how Snowball Earth episodes ended in previous periods.
The science has been around and accepted for 200 years, and only recently when it touched political buttons did it become controversial, much like evolution. Current and past computer models do a good job of hindcasting climate. The primitive computer models used by Jim Hansen in 1988 and the IPCC in 1991 made predictions that have been pretty accurate.
I hope that's helpful.
By , at
Sun Feb 14, 01:04:00 PM:
Again, for at least the five thousandth time, evolution has nothing to do with this argument. Why do you continually insist on bringing an established fact, evolution, into a discussion of unreasoning idiocy, AGW?
And what a piece of BS this is, "The science has been around and accepted for 200 years, and only recently when it touched political buttons did it become controversial, much like evolution."
Make it up, say it over and over, and maybe you can go back to Kansas. You never argue from facts, relying instead on this endlessly repeated claptrap that seems to make sense only to you and your fellow communicants (and perhaps to Nurse Ratched). What "science" are you referring to? What description of climate change exists, and how does one measure the deviation from the baseline? What hypotheses exist and what experiments can be performed to prove those hypotheses?
There are no hypotheses, and there is no experimental data that can be examined. In what universe is this "science"?
By Jim S., at
Sun Feb 14, 05:24:00 PM:
I know they get snow on the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island, but do they actually have any right now? I'd heard there was snow in 49 states, not 50.
By JPMcT, at
Mon Feb 15, 12:09:00 AM:
"I know they get snow on the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island, but do they actually have any right now"
They get most of the snow in Jan or Feb, but with El Nino that's unpredictable. They've had a little snow this year...no ground coverage now.
Brian...what part of climate science has been around for 200 years? The whole field didn't even exist in a serious sense before the government stated funding it.
Hard to call it "science" the way these people treat facts. I tend to think of "Climatologists" in the same vein as Accupuncturists and Fortune Tellers.
Once the AGW scam goes south, the want ads will be full of "former" climatologists.
By Brian, at
Mon Feb 15, 07:38:00 PM:
JP - Fourier figured it out in 1827, so 180 years, not 200. Mid-1800's isolated the effect to H2O vapor and CO2, and Arrhenius figured out the human impact in 1896, although he thought the timescale for it was 10x longer than actuality. A lot of work happened well before the consensus developed, such as in the 1970s when most scientists anticipated warming rather than cooling in the near future.
For more collections of links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#References
By , at
Tue Feb 16, 10:32:00 AM:
Fourier didn't "figure it out", unless you would also claim Malthus figured out the dangers of population. What a bizarre claim. Based on his studies of the properties of heat transfer, Fourier speculated some natural equivalence must also occur in the atmosphere of the earth. Since our understanding of complex earth systems, like climate, is only rudimentary today, it's easy to see that his understanding could only be described as primitive in the extreme. It's a slander to claim that an esteemed scientist "figured it out", when he himself would make no such claim!
Dressing up AGW with the trappings of historical speculation does nothing to make it seem any more respectable an idea or less a liberty stealing baselss scare. Get a life.
