Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
[Update: New York City got more snow in October 2011 than ever before in recorded history, according to the NY Daily News (including some good photos). Special thanks to WUWT commenter NikFromNYC who posted this photo link of Snow near GISS HQ last evening.]
If the forecasts hold up, New York City, home to NASA-Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will get up to a few inches of snow, unprecedented for October.
Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are. And, what is more foolish (in a healthy enjoyable way :^) than Seinfeld? We never discovered how Kramer supported himself – perhaps he was one of the climate scientists at GISS?
NOTE: The above image is a file photo from Google images. If any WUWT reader has a link to a photo of the GISS building taken during the current snowstorm, please post it and we will replace the image. It would also be nice to have a contemporary photo of the Occupy Wall Street folks coping with a little snow.
For background on the Seinfeld link, see this WUWT article:
NASA GISS, a division of Vandelay Industries?
I looked earlier today for OWS snow photos and didn’t find any.
This is rich!
Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
A show where people fret and dramatize about nothing, where we laugh over their silly ways and kooky ideas. And then there’s Seinfeld.
Tromping around Manhattan in winter weather can be a frigid experience. My first apartment there while at Columbia was near Tom’s Restaurant, halfway between it and St. John the Divine. James Hansen moved to the NYC area from Iowa, and may remember the winters of his youth to have been colder, which they would have been. Gavin Schmidt moved to NYC from the UK, and I am sure that his first 15-minute walk in true winter, with the wind whipping around the buildings as it does, got his attention. On the other hand, if he were to moved back home, he’d probably find the UK during winter to be colder than when he left it.
Having moved recently back to New England, I’m in the part of the current storm where it’s steady, cold rain, with a bit of wind (probably start to blow in earnest soon). No sane person would wish for a tree-snapper to visit his neck of the woods. And yet …
With my book nearly out, I blogged today for the first time in months. my subject? The insane views about snow held by Gore et al.: http://bit.ly/sg7xD1
Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.
Well if someone is going to take the trouble to go and take a picture, would it be too much to ask to ask for them to make a snowman too? Holding a sign that says:
Early Snow = Global Warming = Yeah….right.
Actually, you’ll need a team. Someone from that NASA/GISS office might see you and there could be a confrontation. So, you’ll need people to make the snowman, and someone to be the “leader” who confronts whoever descends upon you to explain how cold actually DOES = warming. You’ll need another person still to stand off to one side and take pictures of the whole thing. If things get really tense, the snowman makers could pelt each other with snow while screaming “Here! Have some warming!”.
I say they should pelt each other because I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of encouraging violence against those poor NASA/GISS scientists. But it would be, oh so funny, if someone could snap a picture of Hansen or Schmidt accidently getting a face full of ” the cold hard facts”.
Lots of snow on the roofs visible in NY webcams.
http://wirednewyork.com/webcam4/
Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Don’t worry Nick, it’s coming…not that snow in October means anything (ahem).
We’ve already got our several inches of October snow in New Hampshire from two days ago, and more is coming…err…not that it means anything (ahem).
Man that is funny as crazy as Kramer seemed to be he might as well have been one of them scientists. Just look at his hair in the Seinfeld series
Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
“Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.”
The Daily Mail is reporting that over an inch has already fallen in NYC. But i agree that Ira’s headline is incompatible with his opening sentence.
What I find most interesting according to NOAA’s National Climate Data Center is that continental US winters are cooling at a significant rate. While overall annual temperatures have also been cooling at a good clip since 1998, most of that cooling is in the winter months. This is a plot of the winter temperatures (December – February) for the Continental US since 1998:
http://i42.tinypic.com/2a96rh2.gif
The trend is an astounding -3.26 degF / Decade. The bold horizontal line is the 1901-2000 average. As you can see, winter temperatures have been falling considerably. Interestingly, April through September temperatures (six month period) have shown practically flat since 1998 with a trend of only -0.08 degF / Decade.
http://i44.tinypic.com/11wc521.gif
It really is a puzzle to me.
actually not unprecedented…I believe it snowed in october during the civil war.
The climate she may change, but snow in October ain’t the change I was hoping for.
A sad New Englander looking at a foot or so tonight
BDH
Worthwhile time to remember that Robert Goddard was considered a deviant from the settled science in his time.
“It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt … for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react … Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” New York TImes editorial 1920.
It only took the Times until 1969 to admit they were wrong.
“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” New York Times, July 17, 1969
Yayyy, Glick!!!
Sh sh sh sh sh shadenfraud…..
Yes, no-one doubts the world has warmed, do they? The BEST results were just nothing because you already know that the world is warmed, don’t you? And that’s why you never bother tiresomely hyping cold weather. Oh, wait.
Just talked to my daughter, who lives in the East Village (10th st.) She said it is very unplesant but not snowing yet. She had heard on NY! that it was snowing in the Bronx.
When we lived up near Tom’s (6 blocks), many years ago (pre-Seinfeld), we called the place Ptomaine Tom’s. My daughter lives a block or two from Veselka. You would go Go up town to eat at Tom’s, when you could eat at Veselka.
crosspatch says: October 29, 2011 at 3:00 pm
winter temperatures have been falling considerably. Interestingly, April through September temperatures (six month period) have shown practically flat since 1998 with a trend of only -0.08 degF / Decade.
It really is a puzzle to me.
It should not be a puzzle. Colder winters are due to increasing winter-time surface atmospheric pressure in the Arctic in relation to the mid latitudes, measured as a fall in the Arctic Oscillation Index.
Here is a paper that wrestles with the interpretation of how surface pressure relates to solar influences: http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/space/2008JA014029-pip.pdf
Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
“Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.”
Now you know how we feel.
Mark S says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
=========
Seeing as Anthony is a bit overwhelmed with work at the moment, and encouraging people to submit posts to “this blog”, you might consider posting one of your own ?
I for one, would look forward to your “more nuanced picture of science”, expressed as a blog post.
It may open some minds.
I am old enough to remember the ‘ice age is upon us’ scare. It really did happen you know.
I thought that after the latest warm cycle was over and the globe started to cool again that the climate boys would go back to scaring us with ice; but now they say “cold is really warm”. I don’t get it. Do people really by that sort of nonsense?
Hey Nick! I’m a bit south and west of New York City and I’ve had a couple inches of that forecast dumped on me so far and it isn’t over. My apple tree *broke* under that forecast.
Where is James Hansen? He should be walking around denying the existence of the snow around his building.
For those of you in the good ole US of A – please keep hold of your share of global warming (akak Snow) for as long as possible – as we really don’t fancy it over here in the UK
Thanks in anticipation!