Dumpus Maximus

But, deserts get cold and dry because they have no atmospheric blanket to keep everything in. Deserts breath at night, which makes them cold. With CO2 induced water vapor about, dryer becomes wetter. Me thinks someone needs to rethink that under warmer conditions, dryer gets dryer and colder gets snowyer. That is ass-backwards. From what I understand about water vapor blankets, colder zones get more rain and less snow. Deserts hold in moisture and get wetter, as well as warmer at night.

It was less than one year ago when the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat forecast an “ice free Arctic” for the summer of 2008, based on the weather in Norway.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/01/content_7696460.htm
“If Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007,the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions,” Orheim said.

Why don’t we quit just talking about this and put our money where our mouths are? If we pooled our resources now, we could probably corner the market on snow shovels. If “The Goracle” can get fabulously rich on carbon credit marketing, imagine what we could do with snow shovels!

Obviously someone paid attention to the idiocy that did occur during one of the worst winters in recent Seattle memory.
The local government was so ill-prepared for that much snow, the way they dealt with it became a local joke (probably a national joke).
Anyway, the reference made me laugh.

A snow shovel is like a chocolate poker.

I would be happy to invest in snow shovels but the only large shovels available in my part of Florida are manure shovels.
I suppose I could buy them and relabel them as “global warming” shovels.

Ron de Haan (18:38:39) :

They could have asked the environmentalists to take it home and stuff it in their refrigerators. Why didn’t they think about that?

I hereby nominate “post of the day”…
Wow, it’s a good thing nobody ever dumped anything in the sea before. I mean, EVER… in the history of man. How dare they put something that is, what, 99.99% water into the OCEAN, for crying out loud. The NERVE!
Why, after 100 years or so, there could be as much as a FOOT of sediment under that dumping area! Horrors!

Big Deal.
Montreal & Quebec City have been building huge piles of removed snow on the St. Lawrence river for most of the 20th century.

Did anybody stop to think what happens when that snow melts? It will run down into the sea anyway. What was all that fuss about?
The big deal is that they have THAT much snow, so did Seatlle, the UK and a lot of other places this year. A whole lot of places got lots of snow.
Cold. Getting colder.
What did they think would happen after a Solar Cycle almost 3 years late and passed out? And the AMO and PDO flipping cold?
Same thing that has always happened when the Sun hits a slick doing 95 on the InterGalactic Highway.
It takes out a lot of things, and sets off a bunch of climactic dominoes.
I hate to break it to the AGW alarmists, but the place is going to get a LOT colder before it gets warmer.

Here in Washington state, we are no longer allowed to dump excess snow into the creeks and rivers. Instead, we must pile the excess snow next to the creeks and rivers. Somehow, that difference makes it all better. Oh, and we also a have a stormwater runoff tax. We are being taxed for the rain and snow that falls out the sky on to our property. If we retain the stormwater, we are stealing from the state. If we allow it to runoff, we are polluting. Plus we pay a small fee for the smart people to administer the law.

My goodness – what’s the carbon footprint of all those trucks???

Have no fear! This large amonut of snow has already been blamed on global warming. As the mantra is that AGW leads to more extremes. Wilder, wetter, warmer. The three Ws used by Norwegian media.
Cold temperatures has also it’s explanations; “Even though we’re warming, we’ll still see normal winters from time to time” and “this is just in Norway, the global trend is very clear”. (Using GISS adjusted of course)

OT. Tomorrow is the close of submissions on New Zealand’s proposed emissions trading law.
Anyone want to chip in with commentary about how this is the sub prime of the enviroment movement or other pithy quotes we can plagarise?
Cheers

If this happened in Seattle they’d probably get into a tizzy for polluting Puget Sound with fresh water snow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Well of course. Puget Sound is “salt water”. Oh, yeah, they had a tizzy in December at the “thought” of putting *salt” on the roads becasue it would add “salt” to Puget Sound.

Hmph
If man does it an environmentalist will protest it because, well because man did it. Anything man does is bad, but I suppose environmentalists are exempt from that judgement because we all know that their intentions are in the right place — the establishment of a pristine environment, all green, quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. Think cemetary.

ked5 (20:36:07) :
If this happened in Seattle they’d probably get into a tizzy for polluting Puget Sound with fresh water snow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Well of course. Puget Sound is “salt water”. Oh, yeah, they had a tizzy in December at the “thought” of putting *salt” on the roads becasue it would add “salt” to Puget Sound.
It occurs to me that the LAZY “Precautionary Principle” allows any upset to be turned into a protest. Goes like this.
1. I don’t like what your doing.
2. (Even though I have no mechanism/math to explain it, and I don’t understand it) What your doing must be dangerous and bad for something.
3. Therefore you have to stop whatever it is that you are doing.
The bottom line is control.

CodeTech (19:27:03) :
Ron de Haan (18:38:39) :
” They could have asked the environmentalists to take it home and stuff it in their refrigerators. Why didn’t they think about that?
I hereby nominate “post of the day”…
Wow, it’s a good thing nobody ever dumped anything in the sea before. I mean, EVER… in the history of man. How dare they put something that is, what, 99.99% water into the OCEAN, for crying out loud. The NERVE!
Why, after 100 years or so, there could be as much as a FOOT of sediment under that dumping area! Horrors!”
CodeTech,
I just made the remark because today nothing is possible anymore.
Every initiative is jumped by regulators or environmentalists.
It won’t take much time before we live under a regime that comes close to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik when we still had the Iron Curtain.
When those zealots are finished with regulations there is no room for humans anymore.

If the environmentalists really think that northern Europe will get wetter and southern will get drier, and that this is somehow bad:
* Northern environmentalists will pay to have their extra snow shipped south so the balance will be restored.
* Southern environmentalists will pay to have the northern snow delivered.
* They’ll do it voluntarily. Better yet, in addition to paying they’ll go out and push and pull the shipments themselves.

I’ll wager a guess that it is the oil in the dirty snow that they are worried about, not the salt. It doesn’t take much to put a solid oil sheen on salt water, or any water for that matter, that will then find its way onto a beach. Of course, there are areas along the shore that leak oil anyway. Not from a grounded ship, but from the ground itself. And there is bacteria that have been around for a long time that eat oil. So oil in salt water is nothing new to mother Earth. But still, putting oil into the ocean near shore may not be wise. Ship it further out to sea. Then dump it.

Oh My God!!! they are cooling the ocean and they will rise the ocean levels by dumping snow there. Quick, someone must tell Gore to sell his sea-side summer house.

No, not the koalas…they can’t get enough fresh water right now.
But thanks to Australian firefighters, somebody is making a dent in that problem. (I love this video: The BEST in human nature….helping the CUTEST of wildlife.)

In regards to Dumpus Maximus…..
Rather than cause sea level rise….Oslo being so close to the terminus of the GulfStream Current….such an infusion of melting snowmelt…might reversify (GW Bush term) the North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulification.
Understandify?
In other words….Oslo dumping all of that fresh water in the ocean might plunge Europe into another mini-Ice Age.
Stop dumping those truckloads of snow into a mass of water that is miles deep and covers 2/3 of the world’s surface!
Our lives depend on it.
Join Dr. Hansen March to 2nd in DC to protest Oslo snow dumping!

I live in Oslo. It’s not fair to blame the weather/the climate/global warming for the problem of snow disposal. The real problem is city planning. When new homes or apartments get built, noone thinks of the snow. I can’t remember ever to have seen an architect drawing of a home depicting the house in its environment during the winter. So the snow must be piled up in trucks and taken out of the city rather to be piled up locally along the streets.
The city centre, which usually doesn’t get very much snow, has got more this winter than in several years. A snowdepth of 67 cm at the official met station so far, while the suburbs have around a meter. That is not much really. To put things in perspective, the snow depth record in Oslo is 302 cm, measured 8th April 1951. At a met station 500 meters above sea level, though, but since 1951 even the uphill areas of Oslo have been densily populated. If one meter is a problem now, what if we get a winter like 1951 again with two or three meters?
There is no denying that the winters in Oslo during the past decades have got warmer and wetter, which gives much bigger changes in snow depths from one winter to the next. More precipitation may give more snow, but higher temperatures may also give more rain instead of snow. So some winters have much rain and less snow than before while others have more snow than before.
If it turns out to be true that weak solar cycles in the future will cause slightly lower temperatures, Oslo may see some really snowy winters unless there also is a sudden change in precipitation to less. But everyone seems to be planning for near snowless winters. It is predicted that Oslo except uphill areas will have few winters with permanent snow cover due to global warming.
I recently had a look at snow depths at a met station in Oslo (360 meters above sea level) which has a long record going back to the 19th century. Snow depths, precipitation and snow/rain ratios have changed. Winters during the 30’s and 40’s were somewhat dry and rainy, and rainy since 1990 as well with little snow. It looks like the bottom was reached in the 90’s, but this is just based on statistics and 15 year means, so that observation shouldn’t be given any scientific weight. Here’s what I found: http://voksenlia.net/met/dybder/

No permitus – No dumpus your old dirty snow.
Of course it would take at least a season to get the permit.
If there is no safe place to move it then let it sit.
It’ll melt when it thaws and drain into the gutter.
Then it will run to the sea as water and everything will be back to normal.

I have a question. If the snow is too dirty to place in the fjord, where does rain and melt water go? To be specific, where does the storm drain system terminate?
It seems to me that all that dirt might end up in the fjord anyway when snowfall changes to rainfall.

ked5 (20:36:07) :
Well of course. Puget Sound is “salt water”. Oh, yeah, they had a tizzy in December at the “thought” of putting *salt” on the roads becasue it would add “salt” to Puget Sound.

No, they had a tizzy because they felt the salt on the roads would be rinsed into the freshwater streams and rivers and disrupt the freshwater species there. There is some merit to the claim, but I’d prefer to see some sort study verifying that it has or can have a measurable effect.

We gonna have a whole lot more come sunup! Already 10 inches on the ground here @ -5. Should dip to -8 come morning, and who knows how much more snow. I just uncovered the gardens from the last dump! I am rubbing it in everywhere I go.

[snip- please tone this down and then repost it – Anthony]

Rather than looking at the amount of snow ( which tells you far more about the amount of moisture than cold ) you can look at the artic to see how this winter has faired in the northern hemisphere.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Looks an average year to me up to now. It will be interesting to see if next summer does return more to the norm as skeptics wish for or not. I’m not confident it will ….
Regards
Andy

Pamela Gray:
NobAl Dumpus MaxiGoregus… After all Oslo is the center of whirled peas.

Snow is precipitation by another name? Not so? If those snow storms had been rain storms the water would be in the sea already. So how would anything change?

That report is from London Ontario…So this who piece is based on reports from one area of the N. American continent…
Here in the UK the weather has been fairly mild in the second half of February and the snow is long gone.
REPLY: Fixed, thanks

“I’m definitly not an environmentalist, but snow from the street can be very dirty. I’ve grown up next to a storage site for snow, there is a lot of dirt in the snow, believe me, sometimes it is almost black.”
Snow collects particles/dust/carbon from the atmosphere and outside our atmosphere, just like rain. You can’t stop it, there’s local everyday pollutants and then the natural debris that rains down on us continuously.
We wouldn’t have rain if not for the dirty nuclei (minerals)/salts, plus carbon, ozone, O3, NO2 are being created in the ionosphere through natural electrochemical process’s from the sun.
.

“DJA (20:58:50) :
JimB (19:00:46)
Where did the EPA think the salt came from in the first place?”
Exactly. Every year, there is a “salt cycle”. Salt gets applied to the roads, scooped up with plows, moved somewhere for “storage” and then eventually, thanks to seasonal warming caused by natural climate variations , it melts, and as pointed out before, it runs into the streams/rivers/oceans, aside from whatever gets absorbed locally.
Ben,
“Aside from the possible toxic components, dumping the snow could either locally dilute or over-concentrate seawater, both could an adverse impact on marine life.”
I’d encourage you to go sit beside the ocean in any of the northern areas that experience this amount of snow. There are a couple of great spots along the Piscatiqua River in Portsmouth, N.H., where we experience 8-11ft tides, twice every 25hrs, with river currents running about 6kts. Then travel upriver to the Great Bay estuary and contemplate the amount of water that gets exchanged twice every 25hrs. The impact on salinity from dumping snow in the water would be miniscule compare to what happens when we get 1 good rain.
You can taste the difference in the water caused by 1 good rain, but you have to do it quickly, before the next tide comes in and replaces all that water.
JimB

Bulaman (20:32:40)
New Zealands entry into the global sweepstakes is top news! Al Gore has gone down on his knees to thank ‘ his god ‘ for doubling his income.
Seriously, I was under the impression that New Zealand apart from being one of the worlds wonders (perfect climate,) it is I believe 1/3 covered in trees the other 2/3 are a sheep and cattle’s dream come true. Has it not the worlds largest forest planted by man? And I think that when you place the entire population around the coast line they are more than 1 km apart. All the Kiwis that I have been most fortunate to meet in my travels, have always been level headed and sane, what I ask has your immigration policy done to the famous Kiwi ? It seems that what you imply has ‘outside influence’

And this just in:
“The president will also propose, in the 10-year budget he is to release Thursday, to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies must buy permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low-wage and middle-income people.”
“The budget will show the government beginning by 2012 to collect billions of dollars in revenues from selling permits to businesses that emit the polluting gases, assuming the president’s energy initiative becomes law as soon as this year, officials said.”
Dumpus Maximus Crapus.
JimB

Think of the salt as an analogy.
1.) We take oil and coal, which were previously in the atmosphere, and release their carbon dioxide back into atmosphere. Bad!
2.) We take salt from salt mines (which was previously in the ancient oceans) and put it back into the ocean.
If 1.) is bad then 2.) must be bad, right? [sarcasm on] Of course! Anything man does is bad and unnatural apriori [sarcasm off]

The massive amount of snow this winter is not only consistent with the models, but was also predicted….

Last year was the snowiest on record in St Johnsbury, Vermont since records have been kept at the Fairbanks museum in the 1890’s. This year we have experienced a storm a week and surpassed the normal average snowfall for the entire year by the end of January. We had brief thaws at Christmas and in February which took the snow pack down a little. Temperatures in January dropped into the minus 30’s and minus 40’s. This week’s 18″ storm and the possibility of two nor’easter’s next week put us on track to meet or exceed last year’s all time record. The snow is 2-4 feet deep here and snowshoeing is difficult when you suddenly fall into deep spots up to your chest. It is snowing now with rain tomorrow. The winters have been worsening since 2000 and remind me of the late 1970’s but it is Just weather nothing longterm. The snow ends in May for sure, maybe, we hope.

MattN (04:47:28) :
The massive amount of snow this winter is not only consistent with the models, but was also predicted….
Which one? Got any links?

They could just get just get one of these. Airports, and some cities now are using them, including Manchester, NH which has a river, the Merrimack, but they can’t dump snow in the river anymore, of course. They purchased the largest portable model in 2004, which cost about $350k, and which can handle up to 135 tons of snow per hour. It burns about 170 gallons of diesel per hour, but the alternative would be trucking it outside the city since they have lost most of their snow dump locations.
With Cap and trade and/or carbon taxes looming on the horizon, as well as a likely Dalton-esque period of cooling, we might end up having to go back to this, though.

Some times I am amazed that the people who are most opposed to CO2 and the most alarmist about mankind’s actions and would criticise people dumping snow in water, would even have the gall to ever breathe out ever again.

An obvious and omnious sign that global warming is out of control! The crisis is getting worse! If we don’t stop climate change right now, the warming is going to cause another ice age.
For those who didn’t get it — this is sarcasm

http://images.620wtmj.com/images/620wtmj_020808freesnowpic.jpg
nothing else to say.

Every year Cargill opens gates to flood huge evaporation ponds around San Francisco Bay. The water evaporates away during the summer and in fall there is a “salt harvest” with a huge mountain of the stuff visible in Redwood City. This is shipped around the country to be used for, among other things, road salt. The salt then runs into the ocean and the cycle repeats.
If we had nuclear powered flash desalinization, we could provide huge amounts of fresh water AND natural sea salt for road maintenance at the same time.
There are entire natural mountains made of salt. How do you think Salzberg (Salt Mountain) got it’s name.

Straw Men:
“Have a look at link: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.2.26.2009.gif with a global sea temperature anomaly map from NOAA. It shows vast ice retreat in the Arctic, at the seasonal peak, with open water and positive anomalous temperatures near the North Pole.
Of course it is impossible that Hudson Bay, Chukchi Sea, and many other high latitude locations are suddenly ice free in the dead of winter.
But that is what the map shows. Also, in the southern hemisphere, virtually all ice is gone.
The map is a liar. Its makers have incorporated data from a notoriously broken satellite sensor. But NOAA has published without caveat, when it should have withdrawn or at least tagged the erroneous map. This is intellectual dishonesty, and it has a purpose. Money and power are at stake: socialists are trying to bamboozle the public into supporting a “green economy.”
Source: http://www.seablogger.com/?p=12944

From what I can tell, one of the biggest problems that so many people have is that they cannot grasp, even a little bit, SCALE.
To me, a ton of salt is a significant number. It’s several times my weight, and won’t fit in my car. Consuming it would be harmful, etc. etc. However, to the planet, a single ton of salt is insignificant. A million tons of salt is insignificant. Dumping all the salt we’ve ever mined in the history of civilization in one place would not make a difference, other than purely local salinity issues.
This works in other ways: to me, a ton of CO2 is dangerous. I couldn’t enter the vessel it was stored in without protective gear, and such an amount would represent a significant amount of my personal production. However, again, to the planet this gas is insignificant. If you fly, you see how small are the works of man relative to the rest of the air. Out greatest cities are basically specks in the distance from 35,000 feet.
Oh yeah, just as natural processes maintain ocean salinity to a fairly precise amount, same with atmospheric gases. In both cases, the balance does not need to be fretted about by us, in fact doing so is ridiculous. Both are the way they are BECAUSE of the processes that put them where they are.

Ben Lawson (09:37:56)
I only stuck my nose in here to highlight the frenzied ignorance, knee-jerk responses and adolescent behavior that characterizes this “science blog”.
The only thing you’ve highlighted, actually, is your own ignorance and arrogance. It’s classic, typical trollish behavior. Go stick your nose someplace else.

Ben Lawson:

So… weather DOES equal climate. Gosh! But only if it’s getting colder, right?

For years, what we’ve had rammed down our throats ad nauseam by the media, greens and government agencies, is that every above-average warm/wet/dry day we have is, “further mounting evidence of catastrophic climate change”.
Now you guys don’t seem to like it when the boot’s on the other foot.

Benmaximus Lawsonus nosius highlightus frenzius ingnoramius.
I like this new pig latin.

Salt
If salt is a bad thing to dump in the ocean, in the form of salty snow, then shouldn’t all the poop-processing-plant (P3) effluent water also be kept out?
The salt that people eat, and consume in beverages, does not just build up and up and up in our bodies (we would die if it did). It is part of the (gotta be polite here) excreta both liquid and otherwise.
The P3 does not remove salts from the in-flowing material. The salts pass through the P3 and exit with the treated water. That treated water then flows into the ocean, at least it does in many places in Southern California. For many years, the P3 effluent water from the big Hyperion P3 plant for Los Angeles was pumped through a pipeline about a mile offshore and released near the ocean floor. Apparently, Flipper and Shamu never much noticed…
Shhhhh….don’t tell the Environmentalists…they might have a hissy over this one….

We use to dump city snow in the Boardman river, but the eco-terrorist stopped it!
http://www.record-eagle.com/local/local_story_057120808.html
http://www.record-eagle.com/statenews/local_story_057095803.html
more cold and snow for 09-10, I said so!!!!
LOL

“We used to take the salt from the ocean in large evaporation pans in the south end of the San Francisco bay. ”
The salt operations still thrive. Some old ponds that were in sore need of repair were “reclaimed” but I work right next to a large salt operation a little further North on the West side of the bay.

There’s already salt in rain water/snow, it has to have it to form and it’s also found in ice core samples and glaciers.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j4321x78070j3v47/

Roger, I just can’t help it. It kinda leaks out. I am a strange contrast of serious and off the wall posts. It must be because of the pioneer stock I come from. Great great great (or something like that – can’t remember how many greats) grandfather fought in the American Revolution. Great great grandfathers and great uncles on both sides fought in the Civil War, on both sides. Great grandfather traveled the Oregon Trail and was one of the pioneers of Wallowa County. Actually bought the land that was the last camp site of the Nez Pierce in Wallowa Valley. Grandparents worked in the entertainment industry (silent movies, vaudeville, etc). And then I came along to try to top that. I am the proud parent of three children, one of whom became a juvenile delinquent! Ergo the contrast.
Or it could be that I am Irish, having children is a crap shoot, and none of the above matters a tinker’s dam.

Pamela:
As an Irishman meself, I totally understand. While my ancestry is nothing to match yours, one of my ancestors is a Hero of the Alamo. I can just imagine him standing there, steely-eyed, when Travis drew the line in the sand with his sword and said, “Everyone who is staying with me to fight, step over to this side of the line.” And he stepped over. My family still has two pistols from the Battle of the Alamo.
On the other hand, another ancestor was hanged for robbing trains in Arizona, in the non-Hollywood version of the Wild West. Go figure.
And for what it is worth, speaking a version of “pig-latin” actually came in pretty handy for me years ago. A business colleague and I were in Italy, finalizing a deal in a meeting where the Italians spoke very good English, but our Italian was horrible. They had the advantage when they began speaking Italian with each other and we sat there silent. It would have been too rude for us to leave the room to confer privately, but we needed to do something.
So, I fell back on my roots and began speaking in a slow Southern drawl, complete with home-spun sayings, to my colleague, who was from Louisiana. He got the idea, and we worked out our closing strategy that way, in full view and full earshot of the Italians. They stopped chattering and listened to us, but could not understand a word! We got our way in the deal, too.
Ballsius Maximus Primus, Ya’ll

“Putting snow contaminated with SALT into the sea— How mindless! But the real looming disaster everyone is missing is that adding all this water to the sea will inevitably cause ocean levels to rise. Now that is truly unforgiveable”
(errm…Is your post being sarcastic?!)
Snow melts and feeds the streams, lakes and oceans…..aaah?..it’s been doing this for over a few MILLION years.
Salt going in the ocean could cause problems?!
It’s where most of said salt comes from…..the salt would make the fresh water/snow more saline at melt and improve mixing. Less fresh water impact on the ocean.
Cause we all know how fresh rain/snow water can be so poisons to the environment.
LMAO!
I feel like I live in bizarro world these days.

JimB (06:03:29) :
“AnyMouse (05:15:06) :
JimB (03:44:06) :
But this is required by the UCCC’s Kyoto Protocol: Payments to areas affected by climate change with priority given to poverty reduction over climate projects. :-]”
What was really interesting about the article, which I should have included, was that it went on to say that the administration understands, and expects, that suppliers will pass the cost of the carbon taxes along to it’s consumers, and therefor, tax breaks will be given to the LOWEST INCOME CONSUMERS.
What an inefficient model THIS is. By their own admission, the carbon taxes/fees will be paid only by upper income, so why not just cut out all the foolishness in the middle and just increase taxes on the upper incomes. Errr…even more. Again.
Takus Maximus, Sourceus Disappearus.
JimB
As a Brit who has a house in Florida, I told my US friends last October that, if Obama was elected President, USA would soon have a European style high-tax eceonomy. Seems like I may be proved right.

tc (19:06:50) :
A snow shovel is like a chocolate poker.
Post of the year IMHO.
DaveE.

Ben Lawson, (07:58:23)
While Anthony Watts does not need me or anyone else to defend him, I will say this. Mr. Watts has never met me, and has not asked me to write any of this.
Mildly responding to your above, perhaps Mr. Watts, exercising his cherished First Amendment rights, is simply using his blog — and it is after all HIS blog — to balance in some way the incessant cacophony booming from the AGW crowd that THE END IS NIGH.
We hear constantly from the AGW crowd that the globe is heating inexorably up and up and up, as CO2 also rises.
Yet, the globe’s warming, or cooling, is nothing more than the sum of many temperature measurements, accumulated over time. So, when a notable event occurs, such as is covered in this posting, it is quite appropriate for Mr. Watts to give that event column space, if he so chooses. Apparently, and judging by the number of visitors to WUWT, a fair number of people appreciate what Mr. Watts writes.
If you must bring your heckling and scoffing, then bring it. Just be nice about it, or your words will be snipped, and rightfully so. Bring your arguments and facts that clearly show that rising CO2 is the cause of an increase in measured global temperatures. While you are about that, you must refute the arguments of Dr. Pierre R. Latour. Search around in WUWT or on my blog energyguy’s musings if you are unfamiliar.
Next, refute, if you are able, Mr. Watts’ showing that the measured temperature record is on shaky ground at best, and full of errors at worst.
Those two will do for starters.
I am looking forward to your cogent arguments based on facts. And remember, he who resorts to personal attacks concedes his arguments are worthless.
Roger E. Sowell

This thread is getting far too serious. I’m with Pamela on that, but my latin gene has a serious defect.
E.M.Smith (17:14:12) :
Pink salt ponds eh? Pink. Snow. Hmm. I know. They need VOOM. “…Why VOOM cleans up anything, as clean as can be…”
There is no time for debate
There’s no more room to store it
So into the sea
Is where we will pour it
All that deep, deep, deep snow
All that snow has to go…
…And they jumped at the snow with long rakes and shovels
They put it in trucks and they made high [pink] off-white hills
[Pink snowmen, pink snowballs and little pink pills…]
Now don’t ask me what VOOM is
I never will know
But boy let me tell you it does clean up snow.
(with apologies to Dr Seuss) Oh wait, that was only turning pink snow white 😉
(I must get to grips with italics, bold and strike though here)

Roger Sowell: Oooh, I was THIS CLOSE to stripping Anthony of his “First Amendment Rights!” Next time, next time… Why assume I’m trying to shut Anthony up? You’re right, he’s free to say whatever he wants. But what he says will naturally be assessed, and hopefully judged, by everyone who reads it. Just like our contributions. The “snow falls! AGW must be a lie!” is a regularly recurring theme here. I will grant you that Anthony has a generally appreciative audience, although I’m not sure how large it is. Large enough to click furiously on a “Best Science Blog” web poll.
The Dr. Latour reference, a… wait for it… “letter” in Hydrocarbon Processing, a… wait for it… publication with no expertise in environmental sciences of any kind that you refer to in the WUWT post called… wait for it… “Half of the USA is covered in snow” is behind a pay wall now, but I did find some letters to the editor from another chemical engineer hotly disputing it. Latour’s response refers to hoaxes and insults, and his favorite references are discredited denialist fronts. Hey, I just found Latour’s original letter ! Apparently “When people get too warm, they take off sweaters” so there’s nothing to worry about, and capitalism is great. Well that’s settled!
You know the fundamental problem with his “letter” though, you state it yourself hoping to disarm it: “they will start by saying he knows not whereof he speaks, because refinery control systems have time responses on the order of a few seconds up to a couple of hours, but planetary climate change has a time lag measured in hundreds of years.” Well, duh. Also refineries, fantastic as they are, are very small, very simple and completely CONTROLLED environments. The exact opposite of the earth’s climate about which Latour knows so little.
But thunder away, by all means.

No. He attempted to. But failed. Epically. Citing OISM and other uninformed sources, confusing weather with climate, misattributing rise of CO2, and in general didn’t support his contentions with evidence.
Temple responded with more detail at http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/index.html?Page=14&PUB=22&SID=716332&ISS=25267&GUID=0EE7B6AE-B8A8-4866-B46A-B24D7D68DECB
Given the weaknesses of his arguments and lack of expertise, I’m puzzled why he was singled out as a person who Sowell says we “…must refute the arguments…” of. Actually, I’m not even sure why Temple spent that much time in that discussion. Beyond insuring that Latour’s errors were pointed out to a non-expert audience, there really wasn’t a point in it.

Roger, compliments on a very well written and eloquent comment.
Ben Lawson (21:47:18) :
You are right that the atmosphere is so much more complex than a refinery. The oft-argued basis of skepticism on WUWT is that it is SO much more complex that we cannot model it accurately and that we do not measure it accurately in the first place (see Surfacestations.org, and Anthony’s many “How not to measure temperature…” posts). Additionally, many of the results inferred from comparative work and projections do not hold up under quite small changes of method (see yesterday’s post on Steig’s reconstructions).
Now you might think that worrying about whether there is asphalt or a BBQ close to a temperature sensor is a bit of a joke, but we’re dealing with small changes which are easily engulfed if there is a large margin of error, and unfortunatley most of the errors are biased towards warming. Before any government commits billions to combatting global warming (in my name as a tax payer) I’d like to be a bit more certain that the money would not be better spent on other things.
My own journey from ignorant believer to informed skeptic began in starting to question and understand the science, some time before encountering WUWT. You too are a scientist (were, I see from your blog). Science is about understanding and explaining what we observe. I have no problem with the suggestion that the observed increase in CO2 from human activity contributes to warming, but I have a real problem with being told it is the only or most important factor and that we have to do something about it – alarmism.
Do read Dr Lansner’s post on past climate here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/
It has a simple take-home message than temperature can fall when CO2 is high, and that is why CO2 cannot be the contolling factor in climate teperature.

Actually, Dr. Latour’s Sept. 08 letter to the editor is behind the HPI paywall. We do have Temple’s rebuttal and Latour’s reply available to the public on the HPI site (http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/index.html?Page=14&PUB=22&SID=716332&ISS=25267&GUID=0EE7B6AE-B8A8-4866-B46A-B24D7D68DECB ).
Temple has, with permission, posted the Sept letter on his site (http://www.ccd4e.org/drpierre_latour_and_jeff_temple/) along with Latour’s reply and his (Temple) further discussion that wasn’t posted in the Letters to the Editor.
Latour’s 23 points include such inanities as “When people get too warm, they take off sweaters…”, “…system disturbances are not measurable”, and in general makes several comments best described as “…unsubstantiated informed opinion”. There is also “Atmospheric CO 2 lags atmospheric and ocean temperature rather than leading it, according to data published by Al Gore”; I can’t tell if he’s citing (without attribution) Al Gore, or just not editing before hitting send. He only cites himself and Robinson (and possibly Al Gore). Two cites. Neither of which address most of his contentions.
I notice he thanks the Editors for their ‘accurate’ editorial. I can only surmise his was either the best or the only letter they received in support.
Thanks for the Control Theory review, but since Latour only mentions it a couple of times, I really don’t know why there should be so much focus on it; especially if doing so gives all those other howlers a pass.
Again, I’m puzzled why he was singled out as a person who Sowell says we “…must refute the arguments…” of.

Roger, that withering look you’re giving me over your reading glasses is creeping me out! 🙂
You’re looking for insult where there is none, and battling arguments of your own creation. I would comfortably rely on Hydrocarbon Processing for matters related to refineries. I would NOT rely on it in any other subject area.
Dr. Latour has taken his substantial professional achievements and intellectual perspective and applied it holus bolus to a completely unrelated field that has become a personal/political interest of his. The result verges on the unintentionally comical, not the “devastating” high standard that you assign to it. I would however also comfortably rely on his advice if I happened to own a refinery.
I’ll say it again: control theory is an excellent tool in controlled environments. If only the Earth was a small sealed steel cylinder…
I’ll leave the final, and undoubtably lengthy, word to you.
Ellie in Belfast: I view the skeptic’s fundamental position as one of “until we have PERFECT KNOWLEDGE any action is socialist governmental meddling.” Out in the Real World(tm) this controversy is being treated as a risk management issue with the consensus being that the AGM climate threat is likely to be real and worth attempting to mitigate.
I’d also like to offer some praise. Here’s to you Giles Winterbourne, for YOUR well-written, eloquent, on-topic and frankly quite charming comments. Waiting for my own pat on the head… waiting… waiting… (Just a little joke, I have no objection to the supportive words between Roger and Ellie.)