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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PDOmus coldimus
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.
Objecting to dumping snow in the ocean is like so many other causes of the enviros where they need only produce a theoretical notion that a potential or possible impact may occur and it demands government action, prohibition and government funding to have a bunch of them track it.
Here in Oregon it seems limitless as to what they will concoct in order to oppose literally everything but preservation.
No, no, you don’t understand. Global warming was when the science was settled. Now the science is really, really settled, and ha-ha, silly us: it’s global cooling! As proof that the science is really, really settled, we’re going to spend $400,000,000.00 of stimulus money on more models. Then the science will be really, really, really, really settled. Don’t pay any attention to those Japanese and Russian scientists. They didn’t invent the car and the Internet.
JimB (19:00:46)
Where did the EPA think the salt came from in the first place?
They should obviously ship the snow to Texas if it’s 93F there, it would just melt. Maybe we could get some of it shipped to California, to fill our reservoirs, not only would it help out with our water shortage it might make Stephen Chu happy.
That’s not snow!!!….it’s white carbon dummies.
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.
So… weather DOES equal climate. Gosh! But only if it’s getting colder, right?
Sorry to intrude into the
echo chamber“Best Science Blog of 2008”, but has anyone stopped giggling for a moment to actually think about the environmental results of dumping this kind of snow? I mean, in the right circumstances even yummy, yummy, ice cream is harmful to the environment.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 don’t know which is more likely or if either would actually be significant, but on this technical point I’d rather “keep my mouth shut and be thought an idiot than open my mouth and confirm it”.
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.
Hey, the thread is titled “Dumpus Maximus”. I think we are being given a bit of leeway to be light hearted here. As to the above comment that anything a man does is bad, I certainly hope so!
Badus homosapiusmus!
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.
Won’t dumping all that snow in the sea cause the sea levels to rise, thereby drowning Polar Bears up there and Koala’s down here ?
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.
Alan J,
I don’t know how long you have lived in Texas, but temperatures in the upper 80s and 90s in February are not uncommon in the historical record.
http://www.accuweather.com/us/tx/college-station/77840/forecast-climo.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=1&zipChg=1
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.
Paul,
Not really, the snow came from the seas in the first place. This must mean that glob al sea levels must have dropped this northern winter?
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.
Big deal indeed. Dumping snow on ice is routine in many Finnish cities, although municipalities must get an “environmental permit” for it.
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!
While I really appreciate the humour and lightheartedness often displayed at WUWT (as opposed to the viciousness often displayed at blogs such as RC and DeSmog) I don’t think that attacks on ‘greenies’ and ‘lefties’ assists those of the aforementioned who are earnestly querying the AGW hypothesis. As a former alarmist turned skeptic and, for want of better phrases, an environmentalist and politically left, I found WUWT an essential source of good information during my ‘transformation’. Whatever our particular ideologies, I feel that keeping their expresion somewhat in check can only benefit those on the search…still admire the humourous irreverance of many posts!
A ‘greenypinkobleedingheartliberal’
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/
Satellite temps now same as last year and going further down it seems
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ lerts see if D Archibald’s prediction (-0.4C) this year is reached)
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.
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!