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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“to collect billions of dollars in revenues”.. thats all you need to know.
The massive amount of snow this winter is not only consistent with the models, but was also predicted….
JimB (03:44:06) :
But this is required by the UCCC’s Kyoto Protocol: Payments to areas affected by climate change with priority given to poverty reduction over climate projects. :-]
Last year was the snowiest on record in St Johnsbury, Vermont since records have been kept at the Fairbanks museum in the 1890’s. This year we have experienced a storm a week and surpassed the normal average snowfall for the entire year by the end of January. We had brief thaws at Christmas and in February which took the snow pack down a little. Temperatures in January dropped into the minus 30’s and minus 40’s. This week’s 18″ storm and the possibility of two nor’easter’s next week put us on track to meet or exceed last year’s all time record. The snow is 2-4 feet deep here and snowshoeing is difficult when you suddenly fall into deep spots up to your chest. It is snowing now with rain tomorrow. The winters have been worsening since 2000 and remind me of the late 1970’s but it is Just weather nothing longterm. The snow ends in May for sure, maybe, we hope.
“AnyMouse (05:15:06) :
JimB (03:44:06) :
But this is required by the UCCC’s Kyoto Protocol: Payments to areas affected by climate change with priority given to poverty reduction over climate projects. :-]”
What was really interesting about the article, which I should have included, was that it went on to say that the administration understands, and expects, that suppliers will pass the cost of the carbon taxes along to it’s consumers, and therefor, tax breaks will be given to the LOWEST INCOME CONSUMERS.
What an inefficient model THIS is. By their own admission, the carbon taxes/fees will be paid only by upper income, so why not just cut out all the foolishness in the middle and just increase taxes on the upper incomes. Errr…even more. Again.
Takus Maximus, Sourceus Disappearus.
JimB
MattN (04:47:28) :
The massive amount of snow this winter is not only consistent with the models, but was also predicted….
Which one? Got any links?
Ben Lawson (21:21:53) : “I’d rather “keep my mouth shut and be thought an idiot than open my mouth and confirm it”.”
——————————
I think you just did confirm it!
What happens to the pristine snow, and the salt contaminated snow when it melts naturally? It flows into the same water that it is being dumped into, and that much snow can melt into the sea very quickly when temperatures raise, combined with heavy rains. There is a huge, natural melting of the snow resulting in the same sort of impact on the coastal waters.
They could just get just get one of these. Airports, and some cities now are using them, including Manchester, NH which has a river, the Merrimack, but they can’t dump snow in the river anymore, of course. They purchased the largest portable model in 2004, which cost about $350k, and which can handle up to 135 tons of snow per hour. It burns about 170 gallons of diesel per hour, but the alternative would be trucking it outside the city since they have lost most of their snow dump locations.
With Cap and trade and/or carbon taxes looming on the horizon, as well as a likely Dalton-esque period of cooling, we might end up having to go back to this, though.
In Rochester, NY they always dump the snow in the river, as most of the residential city streets are just too narrow. And today it’s 50F/8C. I love this site, but weather is not climate.
Some times I am amazed that the people who are most opposed to CO2 and the most alarmist about mankind’s actions and would criticise people dumping snow in water, would even have the gall to ever breathe out ever again.
SNOW PURIFIER
Snowjob Industries is pleased to announce that we have just invented a new machine, similar to a cotton gin. The device is known as a MakeMeRich. International patents and trademarks are in the planning stage.
The MakeMeRich receives dirty snow at one end, processes it and separates out the dirt, sand, oil, salt, and any other pollutants. Only fresh, pure, white snow comes out the other end. The fresh, pure, white snow is guaranteed to meet all EU, US, and international standards for purity and may be legally dumped into the ocean, sea, bay, gulf, or stream. Assuming any of those are still flowing or not frozen over, of course.
All the pollutants as described above are captured, separated, and sequestered for proper burial in an EPA-approved site. With perpetual monitoring, of course.
Tipping fees are modest for the MakeMeRich invention, only $5,000 per ton (that’s a US ton, folks, only 2,000 pounds).
The number to call, is BR-549.
[grin]
Disclaimer: for any non-USA readers, no insult, slander, libel, defamation, ridicule, or otherwise distasteful meaning is intended. Any similarity to existing companies, persons, entities of any kind is purely coincidental.
An obvious and omnious sign that global warming is out of control! The crisis is getting worse! If we don’t stop climate change right now, the warming is going to cause another ice age.
For those who didn’t get it — this is sarcasm
The number to call BR-549 is an homage to the wonderful U.S. tv show “Hee Haw,” where the actor Junior Samples played a country hick, always selling something worthless to city slickers. He held up a hand-lettered sign as he spoke the phone number to the camera.
http://images.620wtmj.com/images/620wtmj_020808freesnowpic.jpg
nothing else to say.
We’re just helping to restore the natural balance of the Jurrasic. And we’re releasing the salt in a much more diluted fashion than what would have happened when erosion exposed the salt deposit.
OT, but the Austin American-Statesman this morning had a front page article on the melting of the west Antarctic ice sheet, complete with the obligatory apocalyptic predictions.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/02/26/0226antarctic.html
Some excerpts:
My favourite environmental idiot story was a girfriend who excoriated me for peeing in a lake. I reminded her that that is where all the fish poop, she didn’t care.
Every year Cargill opens gates to flood huge evaporation ponds around San Francisco Bay. The water evaporates away during the summer and in fall there is a “salt harvest” with a huge mountain of the stuff visible in Redwood City. This is shipped around the country to be used for, among other things, road salt. The salt then runs into the ocean and the cycle repeats.
If we had nuclear powered flash desalinization, we could provide huge amounts of fresh water AND natural sea salt for road maintenance at the same time.
There are entire natural mountains made of salt. How do you think Salzberg (Salt Mountain) got it’s name.
There is an obvious solution to this problem. We need to send sail driven ships to all of these places to collect the snow and ship it to Greenland to replace the “disappearing” ice cap. Once there, we use only tofu fed dog teams (to keep them flatus free) to spread the snow over the land. Of course the tofu must be made from organic soybeans that have been grown in hand tilled soil by farmers that are also only tofu fed. The farmers must also wear only breechclouts made of organic hemp, and live in mud huts that are geothermally heated, and so on, and so on, ad nauseum…
Now that I have that solved, I’ll go jump into my F-150 SuperCrew and ride off into the sunset.
Straw Men:
“Have a look at link: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.2.26.2009.gif with a global sea temperature anomaly map from NOAA. It shows vast ice retreat in the Arctic, at the seasonal peak, with open water and positive anomalous temperatures near the North Pole.
Of course it is impossible that Hudson Bay, Chukchi Sea, and many other high latitude locations are suddenly ice free in the dead of winter.
But that is what the map shows. Also, in the southern hemisphere, virtually all ice is gone.
The map is a liar. Its makers have incorporated data from a notoriously broken satellite sensor. But NOAA has published without caveat, when it should have withdrawn or at least tagged the erroneous map. This is intellectual dishonesty, and it has a purpose. Money and power are at stake: socialists are trying to bamboozle the public into supporting a “green economy.”
Source: http://www.seablogger.com/?p=12944
JimB: “I’d encourage you to go sit beside the ocean”. – You are conflating natural rainfall and estuarine environments with municipal snow dumping. Some ecosystems can handle these environmental fluctuations, some can’t. Surprised?
Ken Hall: “even have the gall to ever breathe out ever again.” – Then there are those who never pause to take a breath IN. Natural snow is uncontaminated by oils and metals, melts over extremely wide areas and may be initially absorbed by the ground.
Various: “you just did confirm it” (that my previous comment somehow proves I’m an idiot) – So you’ve dragged the debate all the way to Grade 3’s “I’m rubber, you are glue”? Oh snap!
However, I don’t really care much one way of the other about the dumping of municipal snow into the ocean. Here in Toronto we have one of those monster snow melters that travels the streets all winter and I’ve long given up passively resisting its route (uh, that’s a joke). I only stuck my nose in here to highlight the frenzied ignorance, knee-jerk responses and adolescent behavior that characterizes this “science blog”. There ARE legitimate points of contention over AGW, but they have to be made honestly and with discipline.
From what I can tell, one of the biggest problems that so many people have is that they cannot grasp, even a little bit, SCALE.
To me, a ton of salt is a significant number. It’s several times my weight, and won’t fit in my car. Consuming it would be harmful, etc. etc. However, to the planet, a single ton of salt is insignificant. A million tons of salt is insignificant. Dumping all the salt we’ve ever mined in the history of civilization in one place would not make a difference, other than purely local salinity issues.
This works in other ways: to me, a ton of CO2 is dangerous. I couldn’t enter the vessel it was stored in without protective gear, and such an amount would represent a significant amount of my personal production. However, again, to the planet this gas is insignificant. If you fly, you see how small are the works of man relative to the rest of the air. Out greatest cities are basically specks in the distance from 35,000 feet.
Oh yeah, just as natural processes maintain ocean salinity to a fairly precise amount, same with atmospheric gases. In both cases, the balance does not need to be fretted about by us, in fact doing so is ridiculous. Both are the way they are BECAUSE of the processes that put them where they are.
Ron de Haan (23:16:55) :
“[snip- please tone this down and then repost it – Anthony]”
Anthony,
I am very sorry but the text is not mine.
I just provided the link:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-alarmist-crap_25.html
Have a look for yourself.
Paul S (06:37:06) :
MattN (04:47:28) :
The massive amount of snow this winter is not only consistent with the models, but was also predicted….
Which one? Got any links?
For a message board with so many highly intelligent posters, there seems to be a serious deficiency of sarcasm detectors.
No it’s not true!
“…Snow and ice continue to decline in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica, affecting sea-level rise and weather patterns, as well as human, animal and plant life.”
See here http://www.smh.com.au/environment/poles-apart-but-warming-greater-than-thought-20090226-8j9g.html
The Northern hemisphere must be a sun-bakers haven according to this story by Marian Wilkinson, the Environment Editor of the ever trustworthy SMH in Australia.
But they move to the SH shortly
“…Until recently it was only the fragile Antarctic Peninsula that juts up from West Antarctica, which was considered vulnerable to global warming. The peninsula is warming more rapidly than much of the rest of the world with temperatures rising 2.5 degrees in the past 50 years and ice loss increasing 140 per cent in the past decade.”
I think they have thrown every misrepresentation/exaggeration together that they could find for one story.