More harbinger of the Northern Hemisphere winter to come?
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A bulldozer cleans snow on the Sichuan-Tibet road in Nyingchi, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region Oct. 30, 2008. (Xinhua Photo) |
LHASA, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — The death toll has risen to seven, and one person remains missing, as a result of the worst snowstorm on record in Tibet, local authorities said Thursday.
The seven people killed either frozen to death or were crushed by collapsing buildings. About 144,400 heads of livestock died in the storm, which also knocked out telecommunications and traffic in parts of Shannan prefecture.
In Lhunze County, 1,348 people stranded by damaged buildings or blocked roads had been rescued, the county government said. Rescue operation for the remaining 289 trapped was still underway.
The worst-hit county had 36 consecutive hours of snowfall from Sunday, with an average snow coverage of 1.5 meters. Four people died and one remained missing in the snowstorm.
The rescued people have been moved to other villages, sleeping in schools or government buildings.
A road linking Lhunze to Cuona County reopened on Thursday after 63 hours of snow clearing efforts of armed policemen and transportation staff.
Cuona had been isolated from the outside for three days due to the road blockage.
The Tibet regional civil affairs department has allocated relief materials such as clothes and tents to the affected areas.
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke
Mike McMillan (14:59:25) :
Mike. HELP PLEASE!!! The nutters are running amok
Local authorities have ordered employees to stop using the words and phrases on documents and when communicating with members of the public and to rely on wordier alternatives instead.
The ban has infuriated classical scholars who say it is diluting the world’s richest language and is the “linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing”.
Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas, meaning beauty and health, has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use.
This includes bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and even via.
Its list of more verbose alternatives, includes “for this special purpose”, in place of ad hoc and “existing condition” or “state of things”, instead of status quo.
In instructions to staff, the council said: “Not everyone knows Latin. Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult.”
The details of banned words have emerged in documents obtained from councils by the Sunday Telegraph under The Freedom of Information Act.
Of other local authorities to prohibit the use of Latin, Salisbury Council has asked staff to avoid the phrases ad hoc, ergo and QED (quod erat demonstrandum), while Fife Council has also banned ad hoc as well as ex officio.
Professor Mary Beard, a professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge said: “This is absolute bonkers and the linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing. English is and always has been a language full of foreign words. It has never been an ethnically pure language.”
Dr Peter Jones, co-founder of the charity Friends of Classics said “This sort of thing sends out the message that language is about nothing more than the communication of very basic information in the manner of a railway timetable.
“But it is about much more than that. The great strength of English is that it has a massive infusion of Latin. We have a very rich lexicon with almost two sets of words for everything.
“To try and wipe out the richness does a great disservice to the language. It demeans it. I am all for immigrants raising their sights not lowering them. Plain English and Latin phrasing are not diametrically opposed concepts.”
Henry Mount the author of the bestselling book Amo, Amos, Amat and All That, a lighthearted guide to the language, said: “Latin words and phrases can often sum up thoughts and ideas more often that the alternatives which are put forward. They are tremendously useful, quicker and nicer sounding.
“They are also English words. You will find etc or et cetera in an English dictionary complete with its explanation.”
However, the Plain English Campaign has congratulated the councils for introducing the bans.
Marie Clair, its spokesman, said: “If you look at the diversity of all our communities you have got people for whom English is a second language. They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people.
“At the same time it is important to remember that the national literacy level is about 12 years old and the vast majority of people hardly ever use these terms.
“It is far better to use words people understand. Often people in power are using the words because they want to feel self important. It is not right that voters should suffer because of some official’s ego.”
Several councils, including Aberdeenshire, and Blackburn and Darwen, have also prohibited the use of the French phrase in lieu, while many local authorities have drawn up lists of English words, which cannot be used as they are considered politically incorrect.
Amber Valley Council, in Derbyshire, has told staff it is no longer acceptable to use language “that portrays once sex as subordinate to the other”.
Staff have been instructed to say “synthetic” rather than “man made”, “lay person” instead of “lay man”, “people in general” in place of “man in the street”, “one person show” rather than “one man show” and “ancestors” instead of “forefathers”.
Broadland Council, in Norfolk, has banned “housewife” and replaced it with “homemaker” and asked staff to refer to “staffing” rather than “manning” levels.
Several councils including Blyth Valley and Weymouth have banned the phrase disabled toilet and disabled parking because they imply that the facilities themselves are disabled. They have renamed them accessible.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3362150/Councils-ban-elitist-and-discriminatory-Latin-phrases.html
The Plain English Campaign is now off my Xmas card list and on the hit list. Stupid, cretinous, useless bunch of STI infected scum suckers, who have no more right to exist than poxed up offspring of sibling parents.
One of these days I’ll write what I really mean.
Perry
Roger, that CET October anomaly of Philip Eden’s is wrong – it’s 0.5. He also got his forecast for October very wrong too. He said that it would be an anomaly of +1.3 degrees C.
It’s always interesting to observe how fast someone call troll to another. I do not care. Maybe it is a pleasure in this context. If I go a AGW fanatics blog and criticize the kidney stones caused by global warming and other stuff like that, they call me troll. If I come here to explain why this snowstorm doesn’t mean much, here they call me troll too. Basically the discussion today is this, fanatics on both sides, and who criticizes the excesses of some and others is called a troll.
I just tried to explain why an event of snow does not mean much, and explained the origin of this particular one. Actually, for those who don’t know, a big snowstorm don’t like extreme cold. And forecast to the next weeks for Asia and Eastern Europe show temperatures well above average. So, what has this event so special ? Not too much. It’s weather.
@Jonas (03:42:36) :
As a huge early snowstorm knocked out my power this week for several days, I have been playing catch up with the comments.
Everyone here KNOWS that there is a difference between weather and climate. No need to beat that horse any deader. HOWEVER, as was correctly pointed out to you that while weather is not climate, climate is certainly weather.
A single freak snow storm is weather as is a single Cat 5 hurricane or a single busy hurricane season. However when you have several freak snowstorms, or several seasons of high (or low) hurricane activity.
What you are misreading here is that several factors appear to be converging to indicate a emerging cooling trend and skeptics are naturally excited they could be vindicated after being called all sorts of nasty things by the AGW believers; climate criminals being among the least of them.
Science will truth out eventually and while I have become very distrustful of any forecast model that extends beyond 3-days, I acknowledge that you still trust the models . Good luck with that and we will know if your trust in the forecast for Asia and East Europe is misplaced or not.
These are exciting times for skeptics, eh?
I don’t understand this nonsense about snow post. Snow is different from climate. For example, this snow storm in Tibet was fueled with a lot of pan-atlantic capitalism from a recent buy-out in the andes. Another example is the french revolution. But just days before there was a strong invasion by the mog nols. This kind of post are just that, nonsense madness to exit the crowd. Even Al Gore with all his offensive campaigns across the blighted land looks like a saint compared to this stuff. In short, mr Watts, your recent post has nothing to do with figure skating, and I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!
Furthermore, livingrooms shall no longer contain anything other than a bathtub. It is a livingroom, and to use it for anything other than taking baths is nonsense madness!
Jonas (03:42:36) I know of a Jonas who could have written this eloquent comment. R U a refu G of RR?
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Jonas (03:42:36) That Jonas is fair minded and not just a skosh.
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Jonas (03:42:36) :
Trollers are people who post a comment designed to elicit many replies. Note that the root is troll, as in to fish, not troll, as creature under a bridge. Trolls are often people who crave recognition of any sort, positive or negative.
Some of the best posts garner essentially no replies because they are so complete and correct there is nothing to add. Some of my USENET posts from the 1980s have wound up in Web pages a decade later.
Your one contribution to this “nonsense post” was diluted by ignoring the purpose of this blog and insulting its owner. You have a long ways to go to undo the ill will you brought here.
Thanks for that Steve. That would explain why he reports in the Sunday Telegraph that October came in slightly cooler than average. 0.5C higher would have brought a headline, but 0.5C lower is buried and glossed over in the text!
I think when I say “nonsense” doesn’t mean insulting anyone. It is just that, nonsense. I like this blog and Anthony work at surfacestation.org (actually I do something similar in my country as I had publicly denounced some official weather stations in poor conditions) but I think I have freedom to say that some posts about snow are nonsense. Actually, this one isn’t the worst, a fee weeks ago (September 1) there was another reference to snow in Kenya that wasn’t snow at all, it was a hail thunderstorms, as anyone who have access to NCEP reanalysis of 850hpa temperatures for example can confirm. Media talk about snow, but media are crazy with everything, and believe me, it isn’t just with global warming, if some day we really enter a global cooling phase, media will be crazy with cooling as they are today with warming. My comment was a criticism for those who sometimes are nonsense with cooling as some others and media are with warming. Just that. Far away from insulting.
For me, this conversation can stop here, and I thank Anthony response.
Roger. You can keep an eye on the Central England Temperature here http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html Though don’t take any notice of November’s as it’s always ‘out’ until the third week of the month.
Bizarrely, they added the word “provisional” next to it this evening. That word wasn’t there earlier.
Perry, I understand your sentiments and to a certain extent agree, but you must admit that some people hide their ignorance behind Latin and convoluted phrases. The Councils’ responses are completely ridiculous, however, because, the phrases they have banned are a part of our common usage. It is, in all events, an example of reductio ad absurdum.
It would seem the British local governmental answer to ignorance is more ignorance, dumbing down the language ad nauseam to meet the lowest common denominator.
At a higher level, they vote for an AGW measure right in the midst of the worst snowstorm they’ve had in decades. And a hearty QSDF to them.
Certainly weather and climate are not quite the same, but massive RECORD low temperatures are more climate than weather.
Mary Hinge (14:36:41): “I haven’t a clue what your trying to say here. I was just stating that an anomoly is of more interest if you are being affected by it surely you must agree with that or is it so ingrained in you that you have to disagree (gain say) with anything I have to say?”
I’m sorry you don’t understand, but I did agree on that.
My comment, which you answered, was to Jonas who suggests that positive temperature anomaly in the Alps at a particular time is as non-relevant for this blog as snow.
I replied with an explanation why snow is important in this context.
I don’t know what your comment that temperature anomaly is important for local population has to do with this discussion?
Just wanted to update everyone on the SOI. It’s still very positive for October: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi.gif
Positive=La Nina. Negative = El Nino.
It would appear we are definitely headed for another decent La Nina event this winter.
MattN
Yes, the SOI and other factors leaves no doubt, we have a new La Nina.
The upstarting La Nina looks like this 3 nov:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.11.3.2008.gif
Normaly its very dificult to predict temperature a few weeks ahead at some geographical spot. This is because ofr instance, the route of a low pressure can change a little and then thing can turn out very unexpected.
But.
Whats interesting is that practically all parts of the worlds forecasts for middle november is agreeing: Its going to get a lot colder in november.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html
Updated daily, my comments are valid for today 4 nov.
Check out South Amerca… Very clearly the wholo continent cools markedly within 14 days. This is very interesting because:
1) The level to begin with was a South america slightly cold.
2) South America is approaching its summer…
Cold everywhere on the globe mid november: Siberia, China, India, Africa etc.
And then now the la Nina.
Unless forecasts worldwide changes A LOT, we will see global temperatures fall dramatically nov-dec-jan. Very exciting…
– another thing:
VERY likely to be a coincidence.. but its funny though:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.11.3.2008.gif
Clearly the PDO is very strong right now. Its just a little funny that the same sst pattern can be spotted in the atlantic – a kind of “The atlantic pdo pattern” a U-turn of cold right now freezing UK, Spain and Marokko, just like Washinton, Oregon and California at the pacific. These sst shift all the time so .. But it looks funny.
Mangan (03:30:54) :
“My comment, which you answered, was to Jonas…..”
I haven’t got a problem but the reply was definately directed at me. Let’s just call it a misunderstanding.
“I don’t know what your comment that temperature anomaly is important for local population has to do with this discussion?”
Is this also directed at Jonas? I didn’t mention any temperature anomoly but my input is valid on this discussion as this is a ‘high snowfall’ anomoly.
MattN (18:15:57) :
“It would appear we are definitely headed for another decent La Nina event this winter.”
A La Nina this winter is unlikely, only the NOAA models are showing La Nina conditions, NASA, UKMET, POAMA, Japanese Met Office and ECMWF models show neutral conditions into the NH spring.
Frank. Lansner (03:45:17)
Unless forecasts worldwide changes A LOT, we will see global temperatures fall dramatically nov-dec-jan. Very exciting…
I’m not sure where you get this from. Global temperatures (or anomalies) are, without doubt, rising following the demise of the recent La Nina. There is a possibility that a weak La Nina may emerge in early 2009 but it’s not likely to amount to much and we can expect to see anomalies back to 2006/2007 levels in the near future.
This whole global cooling nonsense has been completely overblown and a number of people are going to be left with egg on their faces pretty shortly.
Incidentally I haven’t noticed anyone refer to the AMSU temeprature record recently, I wonder why that is?
John Finn
I just look at the ordinary forecasts, here for south America:
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp8.html
It shows that we now have anomaly around zero, but next week temperatures will dive markedly -even though south america is headed for summer. So anomalies will go quite negative if the forecast is not totaly wrong.
In general ive have checked all continents from simple forecasts and find that temperature globaly appear to be headed for a dive.
Then ON TOP OF THAT a La Nina seems to start. Still if you ar right that its only a vague La Nina, its likely to cool rather than warm.
Then you mentioning AMSU temp. Please look at my previous post in the present thread. The whole Siberia ha been affected by the open polar waters, of course. Exactly as last year sep-oct where AMSU was raising EVEN THOUGH there was a strong La nina at that time.
In the forecasts now that the polar ice hole is gone, Siberia temperatures are diving fast. This of course will affect upcoming AMSU / global temp.
– and wonder why no alarmists mentions the global ice extension right now. Its extremely near zero: -0,2 imo kvm.
There is a tendensy that alarmist mentions warm stories and vice versa. But the thing is, in the media even though temperatures globaly has not risen in 10 years, we constantly hear warming news as though there where still warming going on. Therefore it 100% ok that some blogs makes it clear that there are also cooling stories.
If you want a balance in the media, promote the cooling stories.
Frank. Lansner (02:37:25) :
“Siberia temperatures are diving fast”
….like they do every winter..
He was referring to the anomaly. #B^1
He was referring to the anomaly.
Are the anomalies [siberian temps] falling ?