Anchorage's record setting cold summer

I for one would be willing to contribute if I knew it was being setup by somone such as yourself or another equally respectible person or group. Given the potential for impact I think you could get a lot of donations. I will research the cost of such a advertisement, or a series of 4 (1 per weekend for a month). They could include carefully chosen research to present to the public as well as other data, thankfully there is no need for name calling or character attacks the data will speak for itself and I think inspire some real debate.

I’m in.

Probably a cheaper method to start with is to issue press releases via business wire. The press release will be sent to major editors, be highly web searchable and maybe written up as an article for free. Cost is anywhere from $600 to $2,500 depending on the number of editors. Number of words limit is 400, need press release format, extra money for more words. I’ll pay for the first one, if <$1,000
Do one per month and I bet it will have a significant impact. Also, remember in marketing consistancy is more important than one big splash with no follow up. It will drive a lot of hits to the website, so be prepared.

Cool is weather, warm is climate. Weather is not newsworthy, climate is. It is so simple I just don’t get why you can’t see it.

I was about to suggest that GISS be moved from NYC to Anchorage, to give it some perspective, but who knows what sort of mischief Hansen whould get into during those long winter nights with nothing to do but tweak the data.

James A (09:42:46) :
A traditional news source that began to run with stories of the increased level of skepticism due to papers and evidence contrary to this “scientific concensus” would seem to me to making “breaking news”…
I agree and this is an argument I have put forward to the BBC for example during a complaint I was making about their bais in reporting.

Full-page ad sounds good — count me in. Not sure how it will affect media coverage but certainly draw more public attention. The publicity can’t hurt.
John McDonald (09:55:40) $20,000 for a FOXNEWS 90 min Debate, prize money goes to the winner
The problem with debating contests is assuring fairness in scoring. You might try polling the audience but that can be heavily loaded. Witness the Best XYZ Blog polls and some of the obvious cheating. There’s an old maxim in law: never ask a question that may not give you the right answer. Polling an audience or group of judges for the winner of a debate is pretty much doing that. Not to mention that most televised debates are often decided by the personality of the participants instead of the content. Sure you’d be willing to risk $20K?

Dodgy Geezer (10:57:42) : I suspect that such an advert would be a center for derision, not something that many people would read with an open mind.
You got that right but the real purpose behind an ad is exposure. There will be an immediate web rebuttal that will help the exposure along. Just like that gratuitous caveat posted in the APS Forum on Policy and Science. The Internet buzz that went up did more for advertising the existence of Monckton’s paper than anything else. It’s the angry buzz that we would really be after.
Don’t expect the ad itself to sway many or even affect the media stance to any degree. The Gore for 2008 group ran a full page ad but didn’t get very far with theirs. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/politics/11gore.html?ref=politics.
Note to Anthony: this ad will need to be signed by prominent AGW scientists (or at least MOR AGW scientists) to force a reaction. We need to mitigate the inevitable ad hominem attack. It does little good to point out that such an attack is logical fallacy in argument. Juries are swayed more by it than anything else.

Cold winter, now a cold summer here in Alaska. That “dusting” of snow from Wednesday was still there last time I could see the peaks on Friday. Normally we get “termination dust” early to mid August, signalling the end of summer. We’ve had snow on the peaks every month this year. I live about 45 miles north of Anchorage.
Most long time Alaskans remember summers being like this in the past, we just got spoiled the last several years. Coldest summer ever though? If gas wasn’t so expensive I’d go run the V8 for a while…

Desist immediately. You are all guilty of climate crime here. And you, Mr Watts, you’re next.
REPLY: Thanks for the tip, I’ve posted this.

Ive been doing some thinking about the content of the ad.
IMO, the first step might be to show how the “consensus” is only apparent. A lot of it seems to stem from the IPCC 2500. Pielke’s oligarchy post might be a good candidate. Wouldn’t hurt to advertise the 30,000 opposers of Kyoto, too.
The con of this approach is the existence of pro-AGW statements by various groups. That probably does more to drive the appearance of consensus more than anything else.
OTOH, the Great Global Swindle documentary seems to have had a real effect in England. A lot, though, might be reaction to the pinch now being felt by the economics of AGW. Just presenting the conflicting science might be the best approach. One con: many people tend to go glassy-eyed when presented with the science unless it comes in bite-sized chucks.
OR, move the talk cost. If you really want to get a large audience show ’em where it’s going to hurt! The greenie “For The Children” is an application of this kind of approach. Seems to work for them.

Don’t you guys get it? This is a sure sign of AGW. Hansen predicted it, or somebody, somewhere. Maybe it was a model. Yeah that’s it. One of the models predicted it. Sure that model predicts snow in Tahiti, but hey, it’s about the climate ya know not the weather.

Here’s an idea for a number of press releases – a “Rogues Gallery” of the worst offending USHCN reporting stations. Tap into that gold mine you have at surfacestations.org. This is why there’s warming being reported. A picture is worth a thousand words. Who knows, with a picture in a press release, maybe even the image-oriented broadcast media would pick up the story.

Snow in Sydney Australia – first since 1836
http://3news.co.nz/News/InternationalNews/SnowmenseeninSydneysuburbs/tabid/417/articleID/64625/cat/61/Default.aspx

‘BRISBANE Australia could be frozen by record low temperatures this week – with the mercury expected to fall to around zero degrees Celsius on Wednesday overnight’. Brisbane is at the same latitude (south) as Tampa Florida.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24085970-952,00.html

As an Anchorage resident who’s job requires him to travel all over the state I can state that this has been a miserable summer. It has been cold, cloudy and rainy. Summit Lake, (halfway between Fairbanks and Glennallon was half covered with ice on June 14, about a month later then I had seen in the 5 years I had been going past it. Looking at the mountains, (Alaska range and the Wrangles), and the snow on them I would think it was April not July. I work outside a great deal, and am optimistic about Oct – Dec being warmer than average, however up here warmer in the winter, and November is winter, means snow. So after a hard winter with some record breaking snow and a godawful summer if we get hit with another snowy winter can we declare Climate Change?

I see it wasn’t snow but “soft hail” that fell in Sydney. Talk about Newspeak. In Sweden where it is rather common it is called “kornsnö” (grain snow) and it has certainly never been considered as anything but snow here.
REPLY: I investigated it, and saw pictures of the storm that rolled through. It appeared convective in nature, and the reports I read made the precip out to be more like melted hail. So I decided not to report it since the mechanisms seemed more related to thunderstorm activity. I at first though “newspeak” also, but after digging into it, decided that it was in fact not snow. – Anthony

Anybody know of a source to look up this type of info for other US cities?
I live in Jackson, Michigan, and so far we have only had 1 day in the 90’s, which seems abnormal too me.
Is there a good source for looking up what typical records for individual cities, states, etc are?

Though I like the ad idea I don’t think it would get the results you are looking for. The best idea is to counter the Al Gore movie with a movie of our own.
This is what gave the AGW the push it needed to turn the tide. We shouldn’t try to attack them head on. I always thought a movie on the AGW movement called Dark Climate would do the trick. Just as long as the nerd science is kept to a minimum.

I’d be willing to contribute to an ad, though I do agree with EW Matthews that a documentary would be the ultimate form of persuasion.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hansen_is_the_odd_one/
Anthony:
You’re referenced in Andrew Bolt’s blog. Keep of the good work. Efforts and resources into this will produce FAR more results than the proposed ad.
EW:
“Just as long as the nerd science is kept to a minimum.”
It’s unfortunate but you are sooo correct. The measure of communication isn’t style, it’s effect. If one generates the action intendened, one has successfully communicated.
The segment of population that truly understands the science is sooo small. I guarantee you, the people actively participating in this blog is an EXTREMELY small portion of population. Far below 1%. It isn’t a complete lack of intelligence alone mind you. One can’t expect Joe 6 Pack to have the time to research this. If one wants to sway the silent majority, one must apply the K.I.S. principle (Keep It Simple). On a big picture level, it isn’t that difficult to understand, If one trys to demonstrate using the Steve McIntyre level of analysis, one is going to lose 95% of his/her audience in a matter of seconds.

Funny thing about this summer in Anchorage is that I remember the really nice days from May and June and quickly forget the cold wet days. So my anecdotal assessment of the summer is that it’s been pretty nice. Compare my anecdotal weather reporting to the data and guess which one comes up short?
It reminds me of the phrase “the plural of anecdote is not data!” 🙂
Anchorage reports official temperatures at the Ted Stevens International Airport. I haven’t taken the time to give it a surface station once over, but even if it comes up clean with respect to microsite effects it certainly is influenced by Anchorage’s UHI. The daily high temp could be biased high as a result. Rather than looking at the daily high temperaures it would be informative to look at the number of degree heating days.

As ever the retired engineer strikes a chord with me (h/t to you sir)
Let’s get real here folks:
1). The amount of money going into supporting the AGW debate vastly outweighs that going into the sceptic community
2). It is hugely politically incorrect to question the ‘consensus’ – just look at what went on with the “Great Global Warming Swindle” – any scientist who dares to put his head above the parapet or who dares to be associated with the sceptic community cannot expect to continue with life as normal
Sun Tzu also wrote:
i) Reckon before a battle; Know the Enemy and Know Yourself
ii) Find out the enemy situation first and then victory will be yours
iii) Win victory by modifying your tactics in accordance with changes in enemy conditions
iv) Move when it is to your advantage – act when success is certain
v) Concentrate your forces against the enemy and seize the right moment to act
I wonder, therfore, whether the time to start placing ads is now?
I am kind of with Stan’s post – Anthony is doing a great job with this as is Steve McIntyre at CA but I do feel there could be a use for a website that summarises the key findings to date from a sceptical point of view. I have some thoughts if people are interested.

Kornsnö (Snow Grain is the official English term, at least when it comes to aviation weather) is actually convective. Typically it occurs when you have low clouds with freezing temperatures near the cloud tops. When the sun heats the clouds convective movement starts and carries cloud drops up above the freezing level where they first supercool and then freeze. Swedish meteorologists call it “fikasnö” (Cofee-break snow) because it typically starts at 9-10 AM, traditional coffee-break time in Sweden. It also indicates very bad icing conditions aloft.

AGW is, as Algore says, the greatest crisis facing the world, not,of course for the reasons he proposes, but because it represents the ultimate example of the use of crisis hysteria and junk science to advance a political agenda. The danger lies in the success the AGW propagandizers have had in making this illusory climate crisis accepted conventional wisdom throughout the world. As a result, governments, businesses, educational institutions, and virtually all of world society is proceeding headlong to implement programs with virtually no possibility of positive effect and incredibly high probability of massively negative outcomes for human prosperity, human freedom and human life.
The AGW debate has never been driven by science, but by politics and I believe the only way that reason can prevail in this literally life or death debate is for the webs of collusion, both political and financial, which connect the leading purveyors this complex fraud to be brought to light and broadcast widely and repeatedly. Unfortunately almost all of the world’s institutions capable of performing such a task are firmly in the thrall of the AGW propagandists, although perhaps a series of well produced and documented videos on YouTube could get the ball rolling. The crowds there seem to have a predilection for conspiracy theories, though they seem to favor money grubbing capitalists as their preferred villains, which is interesting in itself, since almost all the successful conspiracies of history have been perpetrated by virulent anti-capitalists. Admittedly this approach has great peril for reducing the debate to competing ad hominems, a style of argument that I abhor, but twenty years of rational argument based on evidence has had little apparent effect on the Greyhound bus bearing down on the prospects for our future. I fear the the target audience lacks the intellectual sophistication to evaluate the scientific evidence given the easy acceptance of the “settled science” claim regarding climatology, a science so unsettled that, by comparison, psychology looks like plane geometry, which makes adapting the detested tactics of the adversary more acceptable, to me at least, since the consequences of the continuing precedence of the AGW illusion poses such an extreme threat to our and everyone else’s future.

I think an ad is an excellent idea. I’m good for $100.00. I would enjoy a sentence / paragraph /point competition.

So far, 22 days out of 28 days in July the average daily temperature has been below that of last year. That is, 79% of the time, we have been colder than last year. And 2007 was colder than 2006. We are going to have a cold, long, wet winter. By the way, my bats are abandoning their babies just like I thought they might. When they fledge, they don’t have the strength to fly from the roost and are instead falling onto the attic floor because they are underfed and small for their age. They never make it into the air again. Another farmer confirmed that the same thing is happening where his bats roost.

Perhaps money would be better spent on a TOMA (to of mind awareness) campaign of banner ads. These ads could have a grabber headline something like “The Truth is Out there” or such, something that many people might find familiar. Then the ad would direct them to this site and Climate Audit with the encouragement that the debate is not over and to judge for themselves. You could flood different markets and media with this campaign over a longer period of time. Every advertising exec knows that the average joe can be persuaded if he sees and hears something often and long enough. Keep telling them to go check the sites out for themselves and they eventually will. This approach also eliminates any rebuttal argument over the wording or content of a press release or article. Just get more people to these two sites and things will happen.

Interestingly, Yahoo news has a story today about the arctic having an unusually warm autumn (as predicted by this article) but I don’t recall them reporting on the cool Alaskan summer. How many people, do you think, realize they are only reporting half the story.
I’d be curious to know if Alaska also is having a warm autumn

“Al Gore said over the weekend that global warming is more serious than terrorism. Unless the terrorist is on your plane, then that extra half a degree doesn’t bother you so much.” –Jay Leno
“Governor Schwarzenegger spoke about the dangers of global warming. Schwarzenegger’s exact words were: fire, hot, bad.” –Conan O’Brien
“According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.” –Jay Leno