Here is a weather curiosity. We’ve been hearing a lot about snowfall in the northern hemisphere this year. In Oslo, they have given up on trying to pile it up so they have resorted to dumping it in the sea. If this happened in Seattle they’d probably get into a tizzy for polluting Puget Sound with fresh water snow. And it is not just Oslo, the problem seems widespread. Here are some other news stories in London, OT Geneva, Ohio Chardon, OH Wasatch, UT Chicopee, MA and Rochester, NY where they say the piles are making driving dangerous. In Wenatchee, WA they want to spray warm sewage water on the snow to melt it. I know they could use the USHCN temperature sensor at the sewage treatment plant there to check the temperature to make sure conditions are right. Yeah, that’s the ticket! – Anthony
From Reuters Environment Blog by Alister Doyle
It looks more like an Ice Age than global warming.
There is so much snow in Oslo, where I live, that the city authorities are resorting to dumping truckloads of it in the sea because the usual storage sites on land are full.
That is angering environmentalists who say the snow is far too dirty – scraped up from polluted roads — to be added to the fjord. The story even made it to the front page of the local paper (’Dumpes i sjøen’: ‘Dumped in the sea’).
In many places around the capital there’s about a metre of snow, the most since 2006 when it was last dumped in the sea. Extra snow usually gets trucked to sites on land, where most of the polluted dirt is left after the thaw. Those stores are now full — in some the snow isn’t expected to melt before September.
But are these mountains of snow a sign that global warming isn’t happening?
Unfortunately, more snow might fit projections by the U.N. Climate Panel, which says that northern Europe is likely to get wetter and the south drier as temperatures rise this century.
“By the 2070s, hydropower potential for the whole of Europe is expected to decline by 6 percent, with strong regional variations from a 20 to 50 percent decrease in the Mediterranean region to a 15 to 30 increase in northern and eastern Europe.” it said in a 2007 report (page 60 of this link).
So people in northern Europe may have to buy more snow shovels than parasols to cope with global warming?
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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.
They could have asked the environmentalists to take it home and stuff it in their refrigerators. Why didn’t they think about that?
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.
Haven’t you all seen the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”? I mean, it has to be true, it’s from Hollywood and it’s in colour too!
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!
The warming is not happening, the AMO is cooling…
I think we can confidently put the IPCC report aside because Europe will experience
the weather patterns it was used to before 1980 or colder.
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.
Back in the late 90’s, New England received an above average snowfall one winter. Those of us who enjoy winter were ecstatic. There was a major storm pretty much every week, and some weeks would deliver 2 storms to the area.
In February, they ran out of places to put the snow, so the highway dept, along with Boston Dept of Public Works, began scooping up snow, loading it into dumptrucks, and dumping it in Boston Harbor.
This resulted in the EPA filing suit for several million dollars, against the Commonwealth of Mass for poluting the harbor. The EPA explained that although it would seem to most that dumping snow into the ocean, which would then melt and turn into water, could not be a pollutant. The EPA explained, on the evening news, that the snow being dumped?…had SALT in it, and therefor would polute the harbor.
First, how can one government agency sue another?…none of them have any money, except OUR money.
I found it quite entertaining, but not surprisingly, few fellow residents got it.
JimB
A snow shovel is like a chocolate poker.
Cheap snow blower for sale. here
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.
CO2ius outgassious
your turn
Ron de Haan (18:38:39) :
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!
So, it get wetter….. and drier, colder…. and warmer…..?????
Big Deal.
Montreal & Quebec City have been building huge piles of removed snow on the St. Lawrence river for most of the 20th century.
IF we did that here there would be hemp hats for miles carrying their “fill in the blank” protest signs.
You know those Norwegians really got a good thing going, they sell oil and gas, buy offsets so they appear green and have a carbon tax to enhance their standing in the EU… plus they dump snow in the sea!
They are used as an example by every pointy headed eco-economist as a success story! Without hydro-carbon wealth they would not be so … Norwegian.
BTW I love Norway and the people and resource wealth is nothing to be ashamed of…
if you got oil and you know it, do not be afraid to show it, if you got oil clap your hands!
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.
Where did that sunspot go?
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.
It was 93ºF here in central Texas this afternoon. Global warming must be happening faster than any of us could possibly have imagined.
My goodness – what’s the carbon footprint of all those trucks???
Ron de Haan (18:58:42) :
The warming is not happening, the AMO is cooling…
Hi Ron, is the AMO moving into a cool phase? Got a link?
G
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)
Rhetorical Question: Is there any human activity that does not upset Environmentalists?
Snow dumped in Ocean… If not dumped in Ocean, snow eventually melts and runs down storm drains, streams, creeks, rivers, etc and… goes into Ocean…
I really don’t get why this (dumping snow in Ocean) would upset anyone – it’s beyond my ability to comprehend.
My guess is that the Ocean is actually resting on a big layer of rock, silt, mud etc… so if some dirty snow is added – what would be the impact?
Are the roads that polluted in Oslo – with what? And in comparison with the Sea water in the Fjord?
So many questions and no answers.
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