Photo: Telegraph REUTERS/Marian Striltsiv
Spare a thought for people in Russia. Its the coldest winter since 1938. Temperatures may hit -25 in Moscow this weekend. They have already hit -50C in Siberia. Twenty-one people froze to death in one day. (See the Telegraph photo gallery)
Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits
Russian Times
Russia is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as low as -50 degrees Celsius. Dozens of people have already died, and almost 150 have been hospitalized.
The country has not witnessed such a long cold spell since 1938, meteorologists said, with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the seasonal norm all over Russia.
Across the country, 45 people have died due to the cold, and 266 have been taken to hospitals. In total, 542 people were injured due to the freezing temperatures, RIA Novosti reported.
The Moscow region saw temperatures of -17 to -18 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Over the weekend, meteorologists predict temperatures will plunge even lower in the Moscow region, hitting -25. The Russian capital is also expected to be swept with snow, RIA Novosti reported.
Temperatures have been 7 degrees lower than the norm for five days already, which is considered an anomaly, according to the Meteonovosti.ru website
Apparently some Circus trainers thought it was a good idea to feed Vodka to their elephants and swear it saved them from the Siberian cold. Though doctors are warning that alcohol is a bad plan for people…
h/t William Happer (who is in Siberia) and Gordon Fulks who passed on the message. Darren Porter too. Thank you!
Yes, of course, why do you think the alarmists change the meme from Global Warming to Climate Change?
It was a contingency against the risk that a news items like this might sneak its way into the mainstream media.
And here you go, Jo, blatantly pointing these things out, again.
460
The only question now is- How long will this go on and how many people will die before the warmists admit they are wrong?
I would think an honest error of judgement on climate scientists part would necessitate some early conciliatory statements from those concerned scientists involved that temperatures are possibly deviating from projections, with expressions of uncertainty at least in the extent to which CO2 drives temperature and perhaps an acknowledgement that there is a vast array of factors which may impact in the opposite direction that are as yet unquantified.
My advice to those involved, if they wish to avoid perceptions of culpability and possible recrimination from the public at large is to come clean now. Any ramping up of the rhetoric in the opposite direction to reality will have consequences, IMHO, that may prove costly, in a legal and financial sense, and very difficult if not impossible to defend. That would be a shame to not cover that contingency, given that in the big picture view of the oscillating global climate system shows temps have been steadily ramping down for the last 11,000 yrs since the Holocene Optimum with each peak and trough lower than the one before. Time may not be on our side unfortunately, if CO2 really isn’t as important a factor in global temperature trend as some have claimed.
364
“…My advice to those involved, if they wish to avoid perceptions of culpability and possible recrimination from the public at large is to come clean now…”
I think you’ll find the IPCC have already put in place legal measures to protect themselves from the scenario you anticipate:
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/10253-un-climate-scientists-plead-for-immunity-from-criminal-prosecution
They can see the day coming. They’ve always been able to see the day coming…
270
Well then, if they can’t be held accountable legally perhaps Mother Nature will correct the matter. Dare we hope they freeze their butts off? Send them to Siberia to investigate the record cold
climateweather. And while they’re there they can do something useful and contribute all that grant money to keeping people warm and well fed.Honestly, it would take more brass nerve than I could ever muster up to try to make myself immune from prosecution for malpractice of my profession.
They clearly fear something and I’ll give you good odds that what they fear is their dishonesty catching up with them.
Climate change needs a good shower and a change of clothes. The odor is getting intolerable.
100
I believe that was knocked back, wasn’t it? If so, they’ve tried for it, but haven’t got it yet.
Frankly, with the size of this scam, it wouldn’t surprise me if the U.N. went down with it, therefore immunity wouldn’t be an issue. Just wishful thinking on my part, but I do think if the awakened people demand accountability, that’s what we will get, U.N. or no U.N.
60
Hi
It seems unlikely that there would be any way to reform the UN.
The best thing would be to completely dismember the whole catastrophe.
KK
60
Thanks, Phil, for providing the link to the “UN Climate Scientists Plead for Immunity from Criminal Prosecution”
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/10253-un-climate-scientists-plead-for-immunity-from-criminal-prosecution
First in line for government funds to mislead the public, they also wanted to be first in line for immunity from prosecution.
They will be disappointed to find world leaders, Al Gore, the President of the UN, the NAS, the RS, and the editors of Nature, Science, PNAS, MPRS, etc. at the front of that line !
50
I was getting worried about you as you have not been posting on my favorite sites lately.
Good to find you “Down Under” on this magnificent site. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
30
Winston,
expecting the climate alarmists to admit defeat is like expecting flies to abandon a fresh turd. The whole thing is not so much the perfect storm of a eco-political idea as the perfect turd of one, it will attract every intellectual fly in humanity who will never leave and keep the rest of us brushing them away from our lives. These are the same flies that have bred in our universities humanities departments, the public service, the teaching profession and so on and brought us endless, mindless tosh with the inevitable consequences. That is why our kids can’t read as well as they should, our public accounts are in massive deficit and thoughtless budget cutbacks produce avenues for corruption such as with Customs as recently revealed. What chance these nongs could get energy policy right.
50
@Rereke, I believe it’s GLOBAL CLIMATE change – as opposed to a local weather report. 😉
233
And is there any empirical event that if it were to occur would refute the hypothesis that human emissions of GHG (principally CO2) will cause catastrophic global warming?
120
ExWarmist: The simple answer is “No”. Climate science is based on the idea that is it gets warmer, it’s bad. If it gets colder it’s bad. Now they have the perfect choice–if any thing changes in weather, IT”S BAD. So no, there is no empirical event that can “not prove” climate change. Even if the climate stopped changing and stayed one temperature and one season, then it would be a change from before and again, proves their theory. I call it “The Invisible Elephant in the Room” theory. The invisible elephant is responsible for everything that happens in the room and no one can prove it isn’t. Sweet…….
212
@ Sheri: I believe the question was rhetorical. But thank you for stating the bleeding obvious. 😉
11
David–I wasn’t sure if it was rhetorical or not. Kind of like happens with sarcasm on blogs. As for stating the bleeding obvious, as far as I can tell, nothing on these blogs is obvious. The rancor and accusations on blogs tend to lead me to believe that the only thing that is obvious is that opinions are held strongly and evidence generally never presented. Sometimes one has to state the obvious, just in case it’s not! 🙂
30
Empirical event?
What a completely odd comment Nice One.
Of course we also hear (adnauseum) about extreme heat events.
As you clumsily point out, they are often written off as ‘just weather’.
The point is that there is a lack of empirical evidence that any weather event has a significant human signal.
And even if one is found on global empirical scale, there is no certain evidence that it is
a) catastrophic or
b) right to interfere in something we clearly don’t understand enough.
It is highly likely that we’re causing more harm than good by trying to have a ‘political solution’.
The actual environment and climate/weather doesn’t seem to be interested in conforming to the hypothesis or the trends.
152
You mean like how ‘Hurricane’ (it only just surpassed Tropical Storm criteria actually) Sandy?
Or the “unprecedented” (except if you went back 120 years) hot summer in the US earlier this year?
Or the tropical rains that flooded Brisbane?
etc
etc
etc
And yet all those LOCAL events were used by AGW advocates as “PROOF!!!11!~!!elevtyone!” that CO2 was destroying our planet..
You can’t have it both ways. Either they are local weather events (and thus not a part of “Climate Change”), or they are… in which case skeptics are perfectly justified in pointing out that these blizzards (of snow which according to many ‘climate scientists, including the UEA and British Met would “never happen again”) contradict the story that the world is heating up uncontrollably..
190
Is that the best riposte you can come up with, to what was intended as a joke?
I am still waiting for your response to my challenge on the “Message from Boreholes” thread, at comment # 19.4.1.2, in which I explained why models never have, and never will, constitute proof of anything.
I then asked you to supply the empirical evidence (not models) that supports the hypothesis of anthropogenic global climate change.
Can you not do that for me?
It would do your credibility the world of good, if you could.
If you can’t be bothered, I am willing to repeat that challenge on this thread, with Jo’s permission, and any other thread where you fail to add any value. As I said before, it is put-up or shut-up time.
151
Just like Sandy was a local weather event !!!
100
“@Rereke, I believe it’s GLOBAL CLIMATE change – as opposed to a local weather report. ;)”
If it’s GCC there must be a definition for Global Climate
What is Global Climate? Any such animal?
cli·mate (klmt)
n.
1. The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
2. A region of the earth having particular meteorological conditions: lives in a cold climate.
Funny thing I googled definition of Global Climate and can’t find one that doesn’t define climate in terms of local and regional variables but strangely was mostly directed to Global Climate Change. Seems there isn’t any such thing as Global Climate which makes it pretty hard to identify Global Climate Change. A bit more IPCC bullshit for your average unthinking person perhaps?
60
Actually, wikipedia says: Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events)
Climate change is a change in the statistical average of around 1400 weather stations (I don’t know if that’s the current one or not–it’s just the one I have seen in some write-ups). In other words, it’s a mathematical construct.
00
One of course could say that Global Climate is the sum of the Earth’s local and regional climates but that is a dead end for alarmism as it can readily be seen that that definition sort of stuffs up the alarmist mantra about catastrophic CC. The written and geological weather history for specific locations tells us that industrialisation has had no significant climatic effect when compared with the same region even over millenia.
A year or so ago I read a report of a severe drought in a central African region in which it was claimed that the then current drought was unprecedented (CO2 is the culprit, don’t you know?). A bit of googling told a different story. The geological record indicated that an even more severe and devastating drought had occurred in that region about 3,000 years ago.
40
That would have been one of Connolly’s legacies from the time when he was a Wikipedia Editor. You can’t trust anything that Wikipedia says about climate or climate change, because it was all this morons opinion, and nothing about fact.
Somewhere in the annals of this site is the long and unpleasant story, blow by blow, as it unfolded.
70
You seriously believe I would ONLY check Wikipedia? I have failed here…… (I will refrain from using it henceforth.)
Merriam-Webster Online:
the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation
NASA: When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather. (If climate change is the change in averages, isn’t climate then averages?)
It is interesting to note that my real live hardcover dictionary has no such reference to “average” or statistics. It merely says it is the meteorology conditions found in an area.
02
.
For many decades the accepted meaning of “climate”, as defined by the World Meteorological Organistion (WMO), was along the lines of “the change or trend in weather patterns of a region over a statistically significant period of time, traditionally 30 years”, or words that effect (it’s been a long time since I was in junior high school and had to learn it).
The “30 years” didn’t come from nowhere. It had been observed for hundreds of years that “weather” changed in approximately 30 year cycles. Meteorological time-dependent graphs were plotted against 30 year intervals, rather than against decades, in recognition of this fact.
This is where the oft-repeated (including by skeptics), but erroneous fallacy comes from that we “need 30 years of data to show a trend”. Since weather changes in a fairly regular 30 sinusoidal pattern, at any given period we can only be in one of three places. Either trending upwards, or trending downwards, or plateauing between these two states.
From approximately the mid 70’s to around 2000 we were trending upwards, from 2000 until around 2008 we were on the plateau, and now we are trending downwards. It only takes three to five years of observation to figure where we are on the curve in any given period.
The shorter, irregular ENSO cycles overlay on top of the 30 year global trend, and have different regional effects. For Australia an El Nino phase overlaid on an upward trend will magnify the warming for a while, a La Nina cycle will dampen it. A La Nina phase during downward trend will magnify the cooling effect, an El Nino period will keep things a bit warmer. Regardless, El Nino’s bring warmer drier conditions to Eastern Australia, while La Nina’s herald cooler, wetter conditions.
90
WMO page has a great hockey-stick graph!
12
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828)
from the 1913 edition: “The condition of a place in relation to various phenomena of the atmosphere, as temperature, moisture, etc., especially as they affect animal or vegetable life.”
from the 1828 edition: “In a popular sense, a tract of land, region or country, differing from another in the temperature of the air; or any region or country with respect to the temperature of the air, the seasons, and their peculiar qualities, without any regard to the length of the days, or to geographical position. Thus we say, a warm or cold climate; a moist or dry climate; a happy climate; a genial climate; a mountainous climate.”
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&word=climate&use1913=on&use1828=on
No mention of “average”, as we can see.
Attributing “average” to climate is an absolutely crazy idea, and the notion of “global climate” is even crazier.
20
I’m looking forward to reading more details on this real weather anomaly in the Fairfax press tomorrow.
Will it be headlines on the front page of the SMH, or a small paragraph on page 15?
120
I wonder how the thermometers being used to measure the warming in Siberia are coping with the extreme cold.
Hopefully they all have nice warm electric globes enclosed in the cabinet with them, like the one in the linked picture, to keep them working properly.
220
The story is ….
That during the cold war; the Soviets allocated winter heating oil according to the temperatures reported by the weather stations. The colder it got, the more fuel was allocated.
After the collapse of central control, temperatures seemed to shoot up.
241
A serviceman who served on the DEW Line in Canada told Anthony Watts they stayed inside and guessed the temperatures because it was pitch black in winter and there were polar bears about.
170
Do you have a reference for this? I am sure it is true, as I remember reading about it a few years ago.
My memory is sketchy about this, but I think the inclusion of Siberian weather stations in the HARDCRUT series had a marked impact on the runaway warming that supposedly happened in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Anyhow, the world’s media focussed its attention on the supposed global warming induced heatwave around Moscow a couple of years ago, but extreme cold today in Siberia is unlikely to receive more than a passing mention.
70
Since the guy appears to be taking a picture, I would expect the light is from the camera’s auto-focus mechanism. At least, it looks like what my camera emits.
It is a funny thought, though.
cheers,
gary
00
When I was in Murmansk in July 2008 it was an unheard of 25C. A week later they gave me a shot of vodka after my “Polar plunge” in the Arctic Ocean ice. A doctor also took the plunge after ensuring everyone else who did it was OK. I’m sure the elephants loved their vodka too!
On an unrelated note the card I received today had a 60 cent stamp featuring beef cattle. Obviously the Greens have not infiltrated the powers that be at Australia Post.
180
Now you’ve gone and done it – alerted the loonies to an area of your government which is not pushing green propaganda. Expect that to change before you get your chance to consign the Left to the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the outer political darkness.
160
But with global warming the vodkas will flower early and run to seed, the vodka crop will fail, and all the elephants will freeze. Someone needs to let the IPCC know.
80
For those who may be interested, perhaps such as TonyOz, the Siberian towns supply heating for the houses and other buildings from peat-fired power stations. The Soviets built most of these towns near a known (large) peat deposit specifically because of the absolute survival need of heating during the long Siberian winter
These peat-fired power stations heat water which is then pumped through pipes installed in the rooms. This really works, as I have had the experience of testing in -40C conditions. If the water pumps fail, or the piping leaks, or the peat supply proves inadequate, people die, and rapidly. Try to imagine your house unheated in -40/-50C conditions. How long can you survive ?
Solar/wind renewabubbles ? Oh, right …
For those tempted to think that Siberia has such a small population it doesn’t matter (a common greenie piece of flippant ignorance), most Siberian towns have amazingly high-tech research facilities for a wide range of activities. The Russian economy is much enhanced by their existence
180
ianl8888:
The same system i.e. central source of hot water for heating, is used in Sweden and Denmark to my knowledge, and probably widely across northern Europe. It’s usually known as Combined Heat & Power or CHP. The Swedes tend to use pine esp. offcuts, sawdust etc. The Danes use mostly natural gas, but there may be some coal. It is also used in the Falklands where the ‘waste’ heat from diesel generators is converted into hot water for household use in Stanley. The same was used in large skyscrapers in the USA and Canada from the late 1970’s.
The ‘fire’ is first used to generate electricity at 25-30% efficiency and the hot exhaust gases heat the circulating water. Overall efficiency is very high, from 60 to 85%. You can buy modular units (gas fired) for a house made in Victoria around 5kW equivalents. Fortunately very few areas in Australia need that amount of heat, especially in summer. Different in Copenhagen where the average yearly temperature is 8.5 ℃ or in Leeds where summer 2011 didn’t get above 15 ℃.
It is the widespread use of these suburb CHP plants which has done more for cutting Denmark’s CO2 emissions than those 7,000 wind turbines. see http://www.theworldgeography.com/2011/02/unusual-settlements.html
90
Thanks Graeme3 … I am aware of this, of course. I spent some time mapping and evaluating peat deposits in Siberia for these exact purposes … literally life and death for the population
I see the next post down comments on Ulaanbataar in Mongolia. Again, Soviet design and life and death for the populations. I’ve done the same services there as well
On a more whimsical note: although the Soviets have been long gone from Mongolia for some considerable time, Cyrllic is still the official language, although English is gradually taking over. In an extremely tiny village (population maybe 30) named Choir about 40km south-west of Ulaanbataar, I saw the most gigantic statue of Lenin I’ve ever seen, even in Russia … there he was, completely alone in the Gobi 🙂
90
And on the pedestal these words appear
“my name is Vladimir Ilyich- tsar of tsars
look on my works ye mighty and despair”.
Nothing beside remains-
the lone and level snows stretch far away.
(Apologies to Percy, whom I love above all other poets, but even he used just a few words too many.)
(Except perhaps for Billy B. Yeats, who didn’t)
60
.
For brevity, who amongst the modern poets could match Spike Milligan:
.
Myxomatosis, eyes full of puss.
All the work of scientific us.
40
And on the pedestal these words also appear:
“Snow will be a thing of the past.” — Al Gore, 2009
60
And Spike’s epitah, “I told you I was sick”.
510
“I told you I was ill.”
70
Another Spike Milligan:
There are holes in the sky,
Where the rain gets in.
But they are ever so small,
That’s why rain is thin.
And another, about which Milligan said, “From a poet who knew a words’ worth”;
I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and the sky.
I left my vest and socks there,
I wonder if they’re dry?
70
Also in Ulannbaatar, Mongolia. Pipes run from the coal fired power station on the edge of town.I was there in April-May a few years ago, it was around zero at night and my hotel room was so hot I had to open a window. In winter the street kids live (or survive) underground with the hotwater pipes. If you are out walking after dark you need to be careful as they remove the manhole covers and the street lighting is not always the best.
70
Thanks ianl8888 for mentioning this, and while seemingly off topic, I want you all to think about this for a minute.
Look closely at the main image Joanne shows with her Main Post. If that snow on the ground covers everything to that depth, imagine how they would also cover rooftop solar panels, and even without the snow, there would be precious little power generated from them in that Winter.
The same would apply with any large scale solar power plant, and keep in mind any large scale solar plant is only around 150 to 250MW anyway. They also would be useless at delivering ANY power at all.
They had major problems with Wind Power in Canada. Keep in mind that you have what only amounts to one small generator (compared to large scale generators) atop each tower, open to the elements. The problem they had was with lubricating oil frozen solid, hence nothing to keep the generator actually going at all. Hence, Winter depths, especially like these, and there’s no power from Wind.
That covers virtually all renewables of choice these days.
Large scale coal fired turbine/Generators are kept in large indoor building complexes, warmed from the steam driving the turbines, and protected from the elements. Large scale Plants of this nature just keep humming along without so much as a blink, operating at their normal operating speed, flat out.
So, renewables are totally and utterly, (and any number of similar adjective descriptors) useless in situations like these types of Winter conditions.
Graeme No.3 also mentions CHP, Combined Heating and Power, something long forgotten, and every one of us has seen an example of CHP.
CHP was used as early as the 1880’s in Manhattan, mainly from small coal fired power units around New York, mainly in Manhattan. In fact, most of those Plants are still in operation, 384 of them in fact, small units, but all adding up to a combined power delivery of 6,000MW in all. The secondary use for the steam is used in heat transfer units to warm in Winter and cool in Summer.
In fact, CHP is undergoing a revival right now in the form of Cogeneration and Trigeneration.
Natural gas runs the turbine which drives the large generator. The exhaust from what is basically a jet turbine is used to heat water to steam to drive a second turbine which drives a smaller generator, a second form of power generation. The waste steam is then routed to a heat exchange unit, providing warming for Winter and cooling for Summer, effectively getting three uses from the one driving fuel.
Large units up to 2 MW can be used to power a whole Skyscraper, and even smaller units the size of a regular fridge (some as small as a bar fridge in fact) can be used for individual household applications, in actual fact, a total off grid situation supplying all your homes power needs 24/7/365, so rooftop solar, nyahh nyahh nyahh to you. A retrofitted large building can then go off grid, and it effectively pays off the installation in 2 years, just from the electrical power savings alone.
Those large 2MW units for a skyscraper are around the size of a shipping container, and can be retrofitted into the basement of the tall building, some taking up the space of just 4 car parking slots.
So then, where have we all seen CHP.
Remember that iconic image of Marilyn Monroe, white dress billowing up as she stood on the grate to advertise her latest movie, The Seven Year Itch. The warm air coming from under the grate she’s standing on is steam from the CHP, and that’s why early Winter images in Manhattan show steam billowing out of the ground, from the numerous street level grates.
For a reminder, here is that image at the following link.
Marilyn Monroe
Tony.
140
Tony,
That picture of Marilyn Monroe is so out of it these days. Don’t they have “Victoria’s Secret” commercials in Oz that you could fall back on?
Just wondering…
PS: I never have figured out what Victoria’s secret is. Do you suppose there’s something wrong with me? 😉
20
Are you bleedin’ serious?
00
There doesn’t seem to much “secret” at all with Victoria.
20
Sam,
Maybe you haven’t noticed that not much is left unrevealed. I don’t know about the “bleedin'” part but yes, I’m serious. What’s left that could be secret? 😉
00
Sheri,
I had intended a little good natured kidding with Tony and I don’t want this to get out of hand. But just between you, me and anyone reading this, I would very much prefer the days when Marilyn Monroe’s skirt blew up for the camera. Maybe I’m just an old guy remembering things that weren’t so. Or maybe there really was something good in leaving more to one’s imagination.
I think the latter is the truth.
10
Imagination is generally more powerful than reality. Reality has limits, imagination does not. Plus, imagination lets a person put a personal spin on things. It can also terrify–which is why I think some things are best left to the imagination and some things should be hit with as much reality as possible.
00
TonyfromOz on December 21, 2012 at 6:02 pm says:
I’m pretty sure that the air blowing up MM’s dress is from the subway tunnel. Those grates relieve the pressure of the slug of air being pushed by the trains below. As the train passes, the relative vacuum behind the train pulls fresh air into the tunnel.
As for the “steam” from grates, that’s from the storm sewers, simply condensing water vapor; much like your breath on a cold day.
cheers,
gary
10
Back in the early 80s had a Lancia car that had a very unusual quirk. When the car was idling the exhaust was emitted as high pressure pulses that pointed upwards at about 30 degrees. Any woman who walked directly behind the car was very likely to have her skirt lifted up. I strongly suspect that some enterprising Italian engineer had deliberately designed this as a feature.
10
IPCC 5 AR Now Claims Anthropogenic Warming Is Offset By Anthropogenic Cooling! You’ve Got To Be Kidding!
.
An interesting claim being made by the IPCC 5 AR Summary for Policymakers (SPM) on page 10. It states:
~ ” The greenhouse gas contribution to the warming from 1951–2010 is in the range between 0.6 and 1.4°C.
This is very likely greater than the total observed warming of approximately 0.6°C over the same period. {10.3.1}
What they are saying here is that the warming due to CO2 may have been as much as 1.4°C, but some external factor may have cooled the globe and offset much of that warming.
According to the IPCC it is actually 0 to 0.8°C cooler than it should be.
Chapter 10 (Page 15) mentions aerosols as the likely cooling factor:
Over the 1951–2010 period, greenhouse-gas-attributable warming at 0.6–1.4 K is significantly larger than the observed warming of approximately 0.6 K, and is compensated by an aerosol-induced cooling of between 0 and –0.8 K (Figure 10.4b) (Jones et al., 2012).
That means that the man-made global warming is actually more than what the temperature rise shows.
This is because man-made aerosol cooling offsets a part of the warming. ” ~
.
Obviously the IPCC is giving itself a back door for an escape should temperatures continue to stay flat or fall.
No matter what happens, the IPCC will blame man-made climate change.
(via notrickszone)
170
And what explains the lower temperature rise in the southern hemisphere? 0.2 ℃ versus 0.65 in the northern hemisphere.
I think what they are saying is that the CO2 went up X% which should have caused 1.4 ℃ of warming, but because it only warmed 0.6 ℃ we need an excuse, man-made of course.
130
Hah! What further evidence is needed to prove that IPCC science, aka ‘The Science’, has abandoned or in fact never used the Baconian method or an inductive process of investigation.
It doesn’t matter what the evidence shows,’The Science’ endures.
50
At least they are consistent — screwed up right down to their very last breath I expect.
20
So the climate models they admit are incorrect because CO2 isn’t the only thing left in the energy budget. Another reason to discount their flawed CAGW paradigm. God, I’m glad we have progressives to show us the way.
BTW welcome to the new epoch post Mayan doomsday… Should we start a new calendar 00 PM
00
See! They told us Global Warming would lead to
snowless wintersmore extremes. This proves it, doesn’t it?70
Incidentally, it’s Doomsday today. Has the world ended yet, or do I have time for another beer?
70
Actually I’m not sure if it’s an actual prediction, or the Mayans just ran out of rock to continue inscribing their calendar, which has then been mis-interpreted as a prediction by some people today.
40
Definitely still time for a Beer.
Cheers ExWarmist
30
I only drink beer when it’s hot.
I seem to be drinking a lot of vodka these days.
10
It is “doomsday” Friday, in South America, where the Mayans lived. But you need to take time zones into account, so you probably have time for a couple of dozen beers or so.
But don’t drive afterwards. We wouldn’t want to see you killing somebody while the world was ending. It would be too much of an irony.
50
RoHa,
This Today will definitely end. I guarantee it.
Then it will be tomorrow, but technically tomorrow never comes.
40
.
Yesterday is history, and
Tomorrow is a mystery.
But today is a gift.
That is why it is called the present.
.
Wise Old Turtle saying
20
more taxpayer money to buy CAGW-believers, but it doesn’t sound like enough $$$ to do much in “areas that influence an entire ecosystem”! LOL.
20 Dec: Ninemsn: Regions given cash to curb climate change
Australia’s regional areas will have access to nearly $25 million in federal funding to prepare for the impact of climate change and steer projects that boost biodiversity.
Environment Minister Tony Burke on Thursday launched the government’s first wave of funding linked to climate change for the country’s natural resource management (NRM) organisations.
The government has identified 56 NRM regions that are based on catchments and “bioregions”, areas that influence an entire ecosystem.
The cash, to be rolled out over four years, falls under the government’s suite of measures aimed at shifting Australia to a clean energy future…
An additional $15 million funding stream will support research and analysis to develop scenarios on regional climate change to help with medium term planning.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2012/12/20/14/00/regions-given-cash-to-curb-climate-change
30
Biodiversity cultism is part of the GAGW scam in that it provides a rationale for not upsetting the supposed fine balance of Earth’s climate. Don’t want to get old Mother Earth upset by bumping off a few species do we?
Here’s a bit on Biodiversity by Theodore Dalrymple (non de plume) a psychiatrist and a bit of an iconoclast to boot:
“The New Paganism of Biodiversity”
“Why do people say things that they cannot, on a moment’s reflection, possibly believe? Mainly, I suppose, to congratulate themselves on their own moral grandeur and to appear right-thinking in the eyes of their peers. Truth is the least of their worries.
What would those who wish to preserve a maximum diversity of species, as a good in itself, make of the announcement in the latest New England Journal of Medicine of the trial of a vaccine that is a step towards the elimination in Africa of the worst and most dangerous kind of malaria? Will they form a society for the protection of Plasmodium falciparum, the causative organism of that malaria?…”
“… if the malarial parasite could be eliminated by a conjunction of vaccination and other preventive measures, would it be desirable?
Presumably those who believe in the benefits of biodiversity per se would have to say no; and it is indeed possible, even likely, that the elimination of the malarial parasite would have unforeseen consequences. But unforeseen consequences are the Promethean bargain of mankind that it made leaving its “natural” state behind…….”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/38725
My suggestion is that CAGW is an intrinsic component of the anti-science, contemporary Pagan movement. The trick of course is to loudly proclaim the scientific nature of alarmist climate science to introduce its underlying anti-science ideology which declaims the important progress that science and technology have made and is making to the human condition.
121
Pat- what is likely to get more mainstream votes- cash for regions or a reduction in the now forecast non-surplus? (By this time next month the non-surplus will be called a deficit, but you have to give the MSM time to face reality.)
There’s no worthwhile votes for Labor in the regions. Labor needs to save all the mainstream votes it can to retain some upper house credibility after the next election.
Tony the berk is on the skids.
20
It’s just some cold weather, it’s not THE END OF THE WORLD.
And with 5 hours remaining I’m gonna go out on a limb and say we dodged that bullet too. 🙂
(Our New Zealand readers will reach the promised land first, so please tell us if the Mayans were right.)
A few cold days can get tongues wagging the same way a few hot days can.
But seriously. Weather isn’t climate.
For climate we need a 30 year average, no less.
So we must pay a visit to our friend Spongebob who lives under the sea and reports the temperature outside his window twice a day to the Hadley centre in London. By that I mean the Sea Surface Temperature.
Chart of SST and PDO
Using the Pacific Decadal Oscillation index (blue line) as an indicator of change in temperature (green line) seems like a good idea to me. Notice in the 30-year averaging that temperature warms when the PDO goes positive, and after the PDO changes direction the temperature levels off and stops warming. In the only cooling available in this short history the PDO co-incidentally goes negative when the cooling begins.
The PDO looks like it has changed direction recently already, and it might even go negative with an extra five years of data in the 30-year average. Of course we already have that extra 5 years of data. So now switch to 5-year averaging for both metrics (red and purple lines) and notice that the PDO has already gone negative and temperature has levelled off.
If you want to know what’s doing all of this, it’s the sun. The warming of the late 20th century was predictable from solar activity alone. That is also what tells us we won’t just get one decade of cooling, we’ll get several.
On that basis, the earth has already “turned the corner” into the next segment of 30 years of cooling beginning… now… and so Russia can expect repeat performances of this winter at least once per decade for the next 30 years.
For palm-readings I charge 30 roubles and a bottle of Cossacks vodka.
60
Well I figure that the date this happens must be related to where the Mayans lived (Peru?). And seeing that you can’t have a progressive “end of the world”, then Friday for them (and the eastern seaboard of the U.S.) would be Saturday for those of us to the left of the dateline. So New Zealand still has twenty one hours to wait.
Of course Y2k was different. At that time, New Zealand was the first country to undergo the dreadful experience of not being affected by the millennium bug.
50
But Rereke, just where was the international date line when the Mayan civilisation was in full flight?
212
Good spot, John!
That was the point of my comment, it was meant as a joke.
Of course there wasn’t an International Dateline because there was no universal time system. Time and therefore calendars. at the time of the Mayans, were local, and not global. Actually, they may have invented calendars, but I understand that idea is still being debated (especially in Egyptology).
The other “interesting?” fact is that the Mayans also recognised that the year was a fractional number of days. This is thought to have been the reason they measured time in days (the long count) rather than years. The idea of leap years didn’t occur to them.
50
More importantly what caused the collapse of the Mayan Civilisation? Try climate change. The natural variety. What other sort is there? Too many El Ninos in succession causing long term drought?
50
Geeze, you are a cheap date … “Russian Imperial” for me.
50
Bloody Global Cooling!
Well that sure is going to put the kybosh on the models predicting massive methane releases from siberia.
So how many more years does this one give us manbearpig?
30
Interesting. The Russians cop an amazing heatwave in 2010, and now an amazing cold spell. I’m wondering if the collapse of summer arctic sea ice has implications for northern hemisphere weather. Anecdotal evidence suggests that arctic sea ice was low back in the 1930’s, and that was when the US had some very hot weather, and the previous Siberian cold snap (mentioned in the post above) happened.
There was a recent paper which said (unsurprisingly) that regional predictions of climate change were fraught with uncertainty. While it is getting warmer globally, changes in patterns of weather can have unexpected effects. It is a shame that local predictions are difficult, as that means you can’t prepare for the future.
327
So then, John, what you are saying is that it’s not really those CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants after all, eh!
Tony.
201
Funny though- worldwide everyone seems to be reporting hotter summers and colder winters.
It looks to me like global clearing, but no-one wants to consider that because there is too much invested on both sides in talking about CO2, and anyway, those evil Chinese don’t scrub their exhausts so there can’t be global clearing.
But don’t expect cold in high latitudes to show up in the temperature records anyway. Because there are few thermometers there NASA will interpolate data from the models. The inferred heating will then prove the models were right all along (within the margins of error), even though the lower latitudes (where the thermometers are) didn’t perform as predicted.
50
The hot summer/cold winter is interesting. But I’m pretty sure the temperature indices do accurately reflect temperatures in high latitudes. In recent times anyway it seems that the far north has been warm, but the inhabited mid north has been colder.
217
Here in the northeast of China, we are experiencing temperatures far colder than the norm.
We are expecting a top of minus 18 today(23rd Dec)and drop to minus 32 overnight.
The mercury has dropped to below minus 30 several times already this Winter and all time records(-42c.) seem likely to tumble.
We almost got there last year(-39.6C.)and the locals are saying this year is already exceeding the past couple of bitterly cold Winters.
Already several deaths have been reported and many more, sadly, are on the cards.
Rolling blackouts have been the order of the day over the previous two weeks, with a few more to come I would think.
We can be very thankful that several new coal and oil fired power generators are coming on line. The new nuclear facilities should be firing up very soon also.
Around homes, the wood and coal piles are stocked high and extra gas bottles are being stored in expectation of another long, cold Winter. This past Summer, also, was well below average and the growing season shortened somewhat.
There has of course never been a notion here of a world warming out control. To suggest such an idea would bring only ridicule.
20
So John, if it is not increasing CO2 but rather changes in sea ice affecting climate as you suggest then you appear to have come to realise that the last 16 years with no temperature change argues that the alarmist models are very likely considerably exaggerated.
Where to from here? Do climate alarmists just ignore the last 16 years of data or what? Does this cold snap and stable temperatures mean more sea ice and will the AGW team continue to predict a decline in ice and increase in temperature trends despite these ‘unusually cold’ winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere and clear recent history of no warming.
Can we expect the very cold temperatures to be reported or is this just a skeptic plot funded by big oil and ‘1%’ of climate scientists and these data should be hidden from the public like the last 16 years of global temperature stability?
What will you tell your students in the next few years if ‘global warming’ predictions are not realised? Will you claim you were mislead? Perhaps you could say that you were just following the terms expected for yor research grants and really didn’t agree with the computer models but went along with ‘university policy’.
Now is probably a good time to try to think up excuses if you want to try to keep some degree of academic credibility but I expect you may have to eat more than humble pie.
70
.
Three things, (SNIPPED out the nasty and personal namecalling) John.
First, Russia had a short, rather unamazing, but grossly and wildly over-reported heat wave two years ago. Such is the state of modern day MSM reporting, particularly with your fellow (SNIP) buddies at the ABC.
Second, Russia is now in its FOURTH consecutive, progressively colder, progressively more harsh winter, a fact NOT reported AT ALL by your ABC (SNIP) buddies.
Third, it’s not just Russia, it’s most of the NH, from Northern Europe, to the UK, to Alaska, to China, to Japan. Another fact ignored by your ABC (SNIP) buddies. Read a modest roundup here.
Most of the NH is being systematically buried under several feet of snow, (SNIP) John. And it is the fourth progressive year of a worsening situation. Meanwhile, you continue to maintain that “it’s getting hotter globally”.
.
Pray tell, where, (SNIP)?
Certainly not here in Australia, (SNIP), where, for the last three years we have had progressively cooler. wetter weather. And it surely isn’t South America, where for the last three years crops have been wiped out by the worst spring FROSTS on record and even fish have been dying in the rivers, due to the extreme cold.
Or could it be South Africa, where for the last two years they have had snow where snow has never been recorded before?
Where is all this mythical “global warming” (SNIP) John?
There are currently people literally freezing to death, and I’m sure they would like to know.
282
Yeah MV, but you aren’t really interested, are you? The paper said that the regional effects of climate change are not easily predicted.
So is there a connection between the steep decline of summer arctic sea ice and the severe northern winters and hot northern summers? Note that not all northern winters have been severe, and not all northern summers have been severe. But it does seem that there is more severe stuff about.
225
That’s where the research doesn’t back you up John, even the IPCC reluctantly have to admit that there is no empirical evidence there is “more severe stuff about” despite the fact they have looked so hard for it. Severe weather events are commonly occuring somewhere in the world, they just get over reported now especially if it suits the climate alarmists agenda.
Just yesterday I was reading about the severe and unexplained weather events which occured in much of Australia and some other parts of the world in August 1909. But if you want to play “it seems like” games then just open up google and type in ‘severe weather ——-‘ You can alternate between inserting a particular year, a month, a place, a country, a state, a town, a particular day of a month, whatever you like, you will get reports of extreme weather events which have happened somewhere all the time. Severe weather events are not new hot or cold!
190
Yep. Me too.
here:
http://andrewgough.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49575#p49575
10
Remember, climate change is caused by poor memory. People remember recent storms and blizzards and blank everything else out. As Jaymez points out, actual data does back up the ideas in people’s memories. It is not getting worse–we just think it is because someone keeps reporting the climate extremes. I can make people believe there are more thunderstorms than in the past if every thunderstorm I announce storms are getting worse. People are lazy and just don’t check. Enough people, anyway.
130
Sheri, Agreed. The early records have a lot of extremes adjusted out of them – ‘because’ they were extremes sometimes. At the start of the 1900s there was a lower population density to note observations in remote places. There were fewer organisations recording them for the future.
However, digging back, on Jo’s blog we have seen extreme heat reports with massive bird kills. It was probably heat, but it could have been a secondary effect like toxins developing in waterholes. It’s reasonable to assume that the paucity of modern large bird kills reflects lower present temperature extremes.
At the colder end, we have frost. When the official adjusted minimum record corresponds with the observation of frost, there are some obvious problems if the temperature record is adjusted too high.
The observational simplicity and power of confirmation of posts on this blog that raise these points far outweighs some obtuse questionable reasoning that others put forward, thus earing the laughter about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theories that produce (global cooling + excuses). There is a nice team or two here working on matters like this, meaning matters that are hard to deny.
60
John your comment that there does seem to be more severe weather events reminded me of this particularly relevant article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/07/12/summer-of-the-shark-global-warming-edition/
It provides good examples of the following claim:
“The media has two bad habits that make it virtually impossible for consumers of, say, television news to get a good understanding of trends
They highlight events in the tail ends of the normal distribution and authoritatively declare that these data points represent some sort of trend or shift in the mean.
They mistake increases in their own coverage of certain phenomenon for an increase in the frequency of the phenomenon itself.”
210
Brooksie, therein lies the issue … whilst things may seem that way to impressionable people, the reality is that climate is quite variable and the variations that are perceived are easily within the ‘noise’ of climate variation. I’ll add that impressionable people are very susceptible to the repetitive hyperbole of CAGW … pop along to Lewandowsky’s office and ask him about how the theory of propaganda works.
20
Hi MV
Sorry to see you have been snipped again.
KK 🙂
10
And John, a globe full of regions of uncertainty is a global uncertainty. And there goes global warming.
Gosh! It was all uncertain after all and not a done deal as Uncle Al said it was. And that isn’t even a surprise!
You’re getting better with age, John 🙂
90
No Roy, that is not true. The temperature as a whole is increasing. It is how that heat is distributed geographically that is uncertain.
018
You’re not getting better with age then?
20
Logically, aggregated uncertainty leads to greater uncertainty … except of course with IPCC logic which claims that it leads to improved certainty of outcomes. zero x infinity = zero, no matter how one looks at it; therefore climate models, upon which the entire CAGW hypothesis is based, are wrong no matter how many are coupled together.
The only records showing increasing regional temperatures are those being artificially adjusted by Mann and his cohorts at NOAA and NASA. Massive Fraud At NOAA And NASA
20
There’s some serious money waiting for the first science- mercenary that can weasel new modelling that shows the impending little ice age was caused by CO2. Let’s not let those recurring, obstinate weather patterns across Europe get in the way of the global PR machine.
60
It’s been a fair while since Roy Spencer’s monthly UAH graph showed a significant dip – maybe this will be the month. And if so it should make virtually certain that the warmists’ beloved 17-year variability canard goes the way of the dodo, much to their chagrin. 😉
50
“They have already hit -50C in Siberia. Twenty-one people froze to death in one day.”
I cannot relate to this; I have no paradigm. If it got to -50 here, MILLIONS would die.
50
The last time it was -50 Celsius outside my window in winter I was sitting in a 777.
100
And still the Australian zombie climate cabal continues its alarmist propaganda via the captured media’s most febrile idiot:
70
It has a gigantic supercomputer, 1,500 staff and a £170m-a-year budget. So why does the Met Office get it so wrong?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html
00
Gamecock–Interesting comment. I was going to say that it reminds me of the early 80’s when it was -40 degrees for a month here. Or maybe the 70’s, with the -70 wind chills walking to night class. Or Shirely Basin, Wyoming in most any winter! I was wondering if they ran out of fuel or supplies.
30
Is that Minus 40C or Minus 40 F.
Oh, wait a minute, they’re the same.
Tony.
60
Thanks! I forgot to use my handy converter for the -70F (-57C).
00
Is that one of those “coincidence” things Tony?
Now lets see, whats 5 ninths of 72?
Yep 40.
OK you got me.
There is something spooky about that. What does it mean.
This is the sort of question that Global Warming addicts could spend years on and eventually come up with a PhD dissertation.
KK
30
Perhaps the Mayans were out by 40 days …. everybody panic …. again.
70
Keith,
to this day, I still convert the temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit. No reason. Just practice. Keeps Maths fresh in my mind. Because I’m dealing so much with Maths, I like to keep my mind active, and beside me here at my Computer, I still have my trusty plastic brain, a 25 year old Casio fx-100C scientific calculator.
But that temperature thing I do in my head.
Minus 40 C and Minus 40F is the only time that Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures are equal.
Tony.
60
Hi Tony
We started out using slide rules but I think I may have also had a Casio fx 100 later.
I still think that the 40 F and C conjunction is SPOOKY!
As Rereke points out, there may be dark implications of this “coincidence” for our future here on planet Earth.
KK
60
.
Spent the first three years of high school mastering a Faber Castell slide rule, then it all changed, and had to get a Casio for fourth year, in 1966.
Decimal currency had just come in, effectively doubling the “cost” of everything number-wise. Mum and Dad nearly had a heart attack when they saw the price of the calculator.
40
mv
Faber Castell slide rules.
Now that takes me back.
Had one in High School, and also for my training in the Air Force. They were V and A items so you had to sign for them, and heaven help you if you lost the damned thing.
By the time I got back to Wagga Wagga to start teaching the trade, they were using a standard issue Casio fx-1000C, and even if you had your own calculator, (which was actually discouraged) you had to use the standard in class, and for exams etc.
When our Son was in grade 6 at school, he found my old abacus and perfected how to use it, before actually attempting to umm, show off at high school a year and a half later.
He would race the other kids with their plastic brains, any calculation, any numbers, any length of numbers.
He would have the answer faster than they could press the buttons on their calculators.
I miss those old slide rules, a real acquired art in how to use them.
Tony.
40
I still have my Faber Castell, although it is no longer operable. I stopped using it as soon as I got my hands on an HP65, but the slide rule continued to sit on my desk, if unused. One day, just before I left to go to another job, it disappeared. Only to reappear again at my “leaving party” encased in a wooden box with a glass front, and a label that read, “In case of Emergency, break glass”. Since I have never had that much of an emergency, it continues to remain inoperable.
The HP65 used Reverse Polish Notation and was programmable in Hewlett Packard’s unique keystroke assembler. This was in the early ’70’s. The HP32Sii, that I use today, still works in the same way. It drives my staff crazy, that I can do complex calculations, and not need to write anything down. And yet, I understand that they no longer teach RPN in schools, nor how to use imaginary numbers.
70
My first calculator (1975) cost $122, which was an awful lot of money in those days. It was made by a long defunct Australian washing machine manufacturer. If you chose a difficult calculation with 3 levels of brackets (the maximum it supported), you could get it to flash for several seconds before the result appeared. The battery lasted a couple of hours, so I got to know where there were spare power points at uni.
It wasn’t programmable, so I yearned for an HP25, which I never got.
Speaking of RPN, a friend of mine has a calculator app on his ipad, and it uses RPN, so its still around.
11
Sheri,
I remember prowling around the AM broadcast band one night and finding someone talking about -40 degrees (F). I decided to find out where it was so I stuck around until station break. It was Casper Wyoming. The year was late ’83 or early ’84 (winter).
51
Yes! And I was here for every wonderful freezing moment!
40
While Russia is freezing the IPCC is trying to explain why the rest of the world isn’t warming like they said it would. Well the excuse they have been using looks like it has just gone out the window!
Anyone who missed it really should read Matt Ridley’s latest article here. I’ve taken the key points below:
If the reports from IPCC expert reviewer Nic Lewis are correct then as Ridley says, this is dynamite! It largely hinges on the now known rate of ocean warming and observational estimates of the effects of aerosols with regards cooling as the IPCC’s previously claimed explanation for the dampening of the expected human induced global warming:
“the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced – culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago – no longer work.”
“In short: we can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in “radiative forcing” (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.
The conclusion – taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake – is this: a doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6-1.7C. This is much lower than the IPCC’s current best estimate, 3C.”
“Taking the IPCC scenario that assumes a doubling of CO2, plus the equivalent of another 30 per cent rise from other greenhouse gases by 2100, we are likely to experience a further rise of no more than 1C.”
“A cumulative change of less than 2C by the end of this century will do no net harm. It will actually do net good – that much the IPCC scientists have already agreed upon in the last IPCC report. Rainfall will increase slightly; growing seasons will lengthen; Greenland’s ice cap will melt only very slowly, and so on.
Some of the best recent observationally based research also points to climate sensitivity being about 1.6C for a doubling of CO2. An impressive study published this year by Magne Aldrin of the Norwegian Computing Centre and colleagues give a most-likely estimate of 1.6C. Michael Ring and Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois, using the most trustworthy temperature record, also estimate 1.6C.”
70
My dad just talked to a relative near Lausanne in Switzerland. She was complaining about the weather. Far too warm at 12C, and raining.
01
What is the coldest location where the IPCC has held one of its jollies?
80
Copenhagen
10
Anyone know how you say “Glowball Warming” in Russian.
40
Глобальное потепление
71
In case you weren’t only joking, you could use Google Translate.
As a bonus, it helps you pronounce that weird Cyrillic thing Rereke pasted above.
“Globalʹnoye potepleniye”
Google is very handy for when we want to make Soviet jokes about the Gillard government.
110
😉
31
I just realised that amongst all the horrors predicted by the alarmists, millions of climate refugees, people dying of malaria or umbongo disease or starving, they forgot to mention the people who will be saved because a warming planet meant they did not have to freeze to death.
So I really feel for these poor people in Russia , who froze to death when the cure is just around the corner
61
It’s just amazing what happens in the Real World.
I’m sure you would never see cold weather like this outside the doors of University Climate Change Departments around the Globe.
All the hot air seeping from under the doors and from the poor overworked computers would stop that.
KK
81
KK,
The greater reality in all this is that people freeze to death in much higher temperatures than -50 C. Try being homeless on the streets of Los Angeles when we have a bad overnight frost and you’ll have a real problem. It may not get down to more than few degrees below freezing but if you’re exposed… …well they find a few dead every year. And when it’s 100 F + they find some dead every year too (about 40 C and not at all uncommon).
What constitutes a dangerous extreme is not defined by absolute numbers but by what you’re prepared to withstand. If it gets outside your envelope you’re in bad trouble.
There isn’t a climate change operation anywhere in the world that has anything to do with this reality. I wasn’t trying to make a joke where I said they should contribute their grant money to keeping people warm and well fed. I can’t think of a better use for it.
21
Did anybody notice the Environment Canada prediction a week ago – that most Canadians would enjoy a Green Christmas ?
See story and latest EC forecast.
31
We notice alright, hopefully the activists at environment canada will fired soon, Harper is doing a real number on the useless shills.
They have hopelessly compromised weather station sensing equipment, have known this since the 1990s, yet while spending 4 billion bucks on computer modelling, they lacked the manpower and funds to fix the weather station sensors.(EC own words 2010)
Their northern forecasts are a farce.
Also the weather channel does not show cold international weather, but are all over the gore ball warming nonsense if there is hot weather anywhere on earth.
11
Sure is interesting that “extreme weather” doesn’t include record cold or snowfall. Shouldn’t one of cold or rain cancel out one of heat or drought, since we are talking planetary averages?
51
A lot more people are going to die of hypothermia before the Warmistas admit that their theory has more holes in it than Blackburn, Lancashire.
41
Well the Russian probes on Venus help to explain why there’s no warming in that Russian winter.
For those who have been following the research by myself and others from among the 150 members at Principia Scientific International, I’d like to draw your attention to an Appendix now added to my current paper and also this comment I made regarding measurements made by the Russians from the surface of Venus.
All should read the breaking news here, from which I quote:
” This story is huge. America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and related government bodies found no greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere. Evidence shows the U.S. government held the smoking gun all along – a fresh examination of an overlooked science report proves America’s brightest and best had shown the White House that the greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier.
QED
173
A falsehood spouted by the craziest and most incorrigible of Slayers. (He thinks a word search is physical evidence.)
You cannot change your comment vote once it has been cast. I recommend people read the substance behind such dramatic comments before clicking a thumb on it. Obviously that applies to all comments, but particularly to known Slayers. We have enough problems with misinformation in the “climate debate” as it is.
33
I keep on wondering what exactly does support the greenhouse theory. I keep on looking. I keep on finding no support for it.
Doug Cotton has a point of view and he pushes it with completely bogus argument. But where is the empirical evidence that there is in fact a greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere? Help me out here. Anyone got an answer?
It remains a theory with no visible means of support as far as I can see. It’s only a little better than the supposed end of the world yesterday.
I stated this same question in another thread months ago. No answer then either and no challenge from anyone saying I was wrong.
21
This is a very difficult question. The article saying GHE does not exist is based on the term not being in the article, at least in part. One of the problems with researching climate change history is that terms and meanings have been changed during the debate. Climate originally did not have the statistical component, as I noted before. Now, climate seems to be based on the “average temperature” of the earth and how many storms researchers can talk people into believing are getting worse. I continue to try and reconstruct where the argument came from, but Google is not cooperative with searches much of the time. It takes a great deal of research to follow the time line and the players. The reference article says work is underway to find the anecdotal trail of GHE. Perhaps there will be something useful in that. In the meantime, the answer remains elusive.
11
Been on the Christmas drinks early I see Doug.
From the report you refer to:
” For more than a century, we have been aware that changes in the composition of the atmosphere could affect its ability to trap the sun’s energy for our benefit. We now have incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed changing and that we ourselves contribute to that change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are steadily increasing, and these changes are linked with man’s use of fossil fuels and exploitation of the land. Since carbon dioxide plays a significant role in the heat budget of the atmosphere, it is reasonable to suppose that continued increases would affect climate. These concerns have prompted a number of investigations of the implications of increasing carbon dioxide. Their consensus has been that increasing carbon dioxide will lead to a warmer earth with a different distribution of climatic regimes.”
I’m not saying that is right, but it’s hardly the smackdown sort of stuff you are claiming. In the ‘breaking news’ article you refer to, there is no direct quote from the report to support what you say it proves, that: “…greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier.”
10
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S021797920904984X.html
01
“Cold snap kills 37 in Ukraine”
No Comment video from the Euronews TV channel.
http://www.euronews.com/nocomment/2012/12/19/cold-snap-kills-37-in-ukraine/
21
Did Al Gore send William Happer to Siberia?
Could this be the fate of scientists who do not fall in with the regime’s consensus?
21
Similar thing happened to Jasper Kirkby.
01
SNAFU or an attempt to make the highly-secretive Calif CO2 auction appear successful?
21 Dec: Bloomberg: Lynn Doan: Edison Snafu Skews Demand in First California Carbon Sale
California, the world’s ninth-largest economy, has Edison International (EIX) to thank for selling all of its carbon permits in the state’s first auction. The company unintentionally bid for twice as many allowances as were for sale.
Edison, owner of the state’s second-biggest power utility, submitted a proposal in the wrong format and offered to buy 21 times more allowances than it wanted on Nov. 14, documents obtained by Bloomberg show.
When the state Air Resources Board said last month that it had received three bids for every available permit, it failed to mention that Edison accounted for nearly 72 percent of the offers. Had the company submitted its proposals in the right format, about 225,000 permits would have gone unsold at auction, Bloomberg calculations based on data from the report show…
The company asked the board if it could resubmit the proposal, and was refused. “I guess they considered it and determined that they could not, or would not,” he said…
Mary Nichols, chairman of the state’s air board, described the Nov. 14 sale as proof that such a system could create a “vibrant and successful” market for carbon allowances.
The auction “went without a hitch,” Nichols said Nov. 19, when her agency released initial results of the sale…
Allowances traded at $14.75 a metric ton after the story broke yesterday, down from $15.10 to $15.20 earlier in the day, he said.
“The price decrease is from the expectation now that one of the largest buying entities won’t go into the auction as much as people thought in the next four auctions,” Granet said…
Futures based on permits for the U.S. Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, have been trading at $1.97 a ton since March, 4 cents above the floor price in its latest auction this month…
“I don’t believe we intend to do anything more except to move forward at this time,” Stern said. “There’s another auction coming up in February. We’ll develop a plan and use the right format this time.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/edison-snafu-skews-demand-in-first-california-carbon-permit-sale.html
01
anyone got a clue what this means in the CAGW scheme of things?
20 Dec: Bloomberg: Mark Drajem: U.S. Oil Fields Could Store Decades of Carbon Emissions
Depleted North American oil fields could hold billions more tons of carbon dioxide than previously estimated, providing a way to both curb greenhouse gas emissions and boost production of domestic fuels.
In a report released yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy said the underground capacity of oil fields in the U.S. and Canada is 225 billion metric tons, or about 60 percent greater than estimates from two years ago. That’s the equivalent of more than a century of U.S. power-plant emissions at current levels.
“These numbers are jaw-dropping,” Kurt Waltzer, coordinator for carbon capture at the Clean Air Task Force, said in an interview. “The more we learn about enhanced-oil recovery the better it looks as a technology.”…
With investments in pipelines and upgraded technologies to improve collection of carbon dioxide, oil companies could buy the gas from power plants or ethanol manufacturers instead of extracting it from underground deposits, advocates say.
“What’s constraining enhanced oil recovery now is the lack of carbon dioxide,” Waltzer said.
Once it’s pumped deep into the ground, most of the gas remains trapped, and kept from release into the atmosphere where it can cause global warming.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/energy-department-says-oil-fields-could-store-decades-of-carbon.html
01
pat,
the original, and now thankfully failed, ETS legislation in the US, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and John Kerry (President Obama’s new nominee for Secretary of State) was 987 pages long.
In that (proposed) legislation it dealt with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and had a lengthy section on just that.
CCS calls for the undergrounding of CO2 emitted from all sources, in the main coal fired power.
For just the U.S. alone and just from power generation alone, (both coal fired and Natural Gas) they are looking at almost 3.5 Billion tons of CO2 ….. every year, if every plant was to be retrofitted.
The sheer and utter impossibility of that sort of scale is utterly beyond the comprehension of these people, but they still wanted to legislate.
Now, the thought is (was, at that time) that expired natural gas and oil fields could be used for the purpose of umm, burying the CO2. Pump that CO2 into those existing and now empty gas and oil fields. It would aid in the recovery of any oil and gas still in them, and also utilise that space for the storage of said CO2.
However, the proposed legislation specifically banned this process of using expired empty oil and gas fields, and said that new pristine and already empty holes in the ground had to be used, and that no CO2 could be pumped into those existing empty oil and gas fields.
The sheer scale of finding those new holes in the ground, is rapidly becoming obvious, and there is probably a rethink under way now, and that is the thrust of what pat has mentioned above.
Keep in mind, any burial of CO2 is supposed to be forever, never to seep back to the surface, and around 3.5 billion tons a year, just from electrical power generation alone.
It’s not going to happen, be it in new fields or expired oil and gas fields.
People have this impression that something like this CCS is actually doable.
It cannot be done on the scale required.
Bury it forever with no possibility ever of it getting back to the surface 3.5 billion tons a year.
That’s just pumping it into the ground. Oh, at the rate of 111 tons per second, or 25,000 Gallons per second. All that provisional on whether they can capture the exhaust from the plants, separate the CO2 from that, liquify the CO2 at very high pressure and very low temperature and then construct the pipelines, pumping stations and cooling to get it to those holes in the ground, where they will need new pumping stations, all the while keeping it liquid (cold and at that high pressure) all of this at the same rate it is being emitted, full in the knowledge that as it is pumped back into the ground, it expands in considerable volume back to its gaseous state as the temperature increases.
How many thousands of miles of pipelines to these holes in the ground, and new pipelines when that hole fills. How many holes will they need, and to do this for decades and decades, never to seep back to the surface, ever.
They can say that underground oil and gas fields can hold, well, whatever they can hold. CCS is a green pipe dream of almost April Fools Day scale that will never be realised.
And all this uses up to 40% of the electrical power generated by the plant which has CCS capability.
Whenever I hear any politician saying CCS can be made viable, it makes me almost vomit, from laughing so loudly.
If it was proposed not to use existing oil and gas fields in the original failed legislation, it was done for a specific reason. They investigated it then, and found good reasons not to do it, so any talk now of doing it is uninformed posturing by vested interests just putting it out there.
Tony.
80
.
Just announced are plans to build a CCS coal-fired plant in QLD. The trick, apparently, is that it will burn the coal in a pure oxygen atmosphere. It is claimed this will dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 (no explanation of how), and what is left will collected (again no explanation of how) and be piped away for underground storage (STILL no explanation of how or where).
.
My back of the envelope calculations suggest it takes about 30% more energy as electricity to extract the oxygen from the air, as could be created from the sensible heat created and converted to electricity via a steam turbine and generator. And that’s with no efficiency losses. On top of that is the energy required for compression, cooling and pumping of the CO2, as already outlined by Tony.
.
It will be interesting – not to mention depressing – to see how many millions of taxpayers’ hard-earned gets thrown into this bottomless money-pit, before it goes the way of hot-rock geothermal.
61
This sounds a lot like a do-it-yourself volcano. There is magma down there, folks. Molten rock. How are you going to keep the CO2 frozen in those temperatures. This sounds like an idea that someone with a Liberal fArts degree would come up with.
51
Tony (and Rereke)
Although commercially this could be pushing things (intended )your temperature assumptions are incorrect. The process relies on injecting the CO2 in a supercritical fluid state which occurs when both pressure and temperature exceed the critical point of 73 atm and 31C. This pressure generally occurs at depths below 800 m and most sedimentary basins the temperature will be above 31 C at these sorts of depths. Can be into depleted gas/oil reservoirs or saline aquifers See diagram
Yes has many issues but is already happening in a number spots around the world, mainly depleted reservoirs.
The development of the huge Gorgon project in WA’s northwest is reliant on sequestration of the approximately 12% CO2 in the gas, CO2 that would normally be vented straight into the atmosphere. This CO2 which varies between gas fields (0-20%) is not usually accounted for when comparing coal and gas fired power stations.
11
“It’s a deadly cold Russian winter: minus 50 in Siberia”…..”Thawing of Permafrost Expected to Cause Significant Additional Global Warming, Not yet Accounted for in Climate Predictions”
Posted on the rather ironically named “Skeptical Science” on 16 December 2012 by John Hartz.
Has there been a U.N. “Deadly Cold Russian Winter” exclusion zone set around the Russian permafrost to protect its imminent thawing from not occurring?
Reality bites.
51
[…] It’s a deadly cold Russian winter: minus 50 in Siberia Photo: Telegraph REUTERS/Marian Striltsiv […]
01
Slide rules – Versalog. Leather case on a belt clip – standard EE uniform.
Not only has ready reckoning gone the way of the dodo, I was shocked to learn that my grandkids aren’t required to learn cursive writing.
I also recall one prof castigating a student (obviously one destined to become a climatologist) for reading his 10 inch slide rule to about 6 significant figures.
21
Slide rules certainly give you a clue about how many significant figures makes sense. Students in high school in WA are typically required to have answers in their Physics exam to 3 significant figures. Some teachers get them to round intermediate calculations to 3sf as well, leading to inaccurate final answers. While having 10sf makes no sense, it can save you from problems with ill conditioned expressions (like dividing by the difference of two nearly equal numbers). In the days before calculators you had to rearrange the expression so that it gave a sensible answer.
In a recent physics exam there was a question where part of the marks were given for having an appropriate number of significant figures. It was a projectile motion question, where the expected answer was an elevation of 5 degrees. So students lost a mark if they said 4.9 degrees. However there was a problem in that 85 degrees was also correct. But if you insist on 1 significant figure, 85 degrees becomes 90 degrees or 80 degrees, neither of which would work at all. You could have avoided the problem by saying 5 degrees short of a right angle, but it does show that significant figures are a naive way of dealing with accuracy.
Those of you with long memories might remember Martin Gardner’s April fools joke that e^(sqrt(163)*pi) was an integer. You’d plug it into your calculator and find you didn’t have the accuracy needed. It is 262537412640768743.999999999999250072597198…. if you are interested…
02
Happy Christmas to Australia….From Fen Beagle….
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/we-see-things/
21
TonyfromOz –
thanx for the info.
01
How are those Russian summer heatwaves going?
Cherry picking there, Jo?
02
It’s only “CLIMATE CHANGE” when it’s hot………………………
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/its_only_climate_when_its_hot/
GLOBAL WARMING IS THE BIGGEST FRAUD IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION !!
CARBON DIOXIDE IS PLANT FOOD AND NOT POLLUTION !!!!!!!!!
THE RECENT SNOW IN THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS DID NOT GET MUCH COVERAGE EITHER !
OBVIOUSLY REPORTING COLD WEATHER DOES NOT SUIT THE GREEN COMMUNIST AGENDA !!
01