Many WUWT readers have heard about this:
UPDATE: Video report on the DC snow here h/t to Stefan P
Here is my IntelliWeather Monday and hour by hour forecast for Washington, DC.
WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 2 PM EST MONDAY
Includes the Counties: District Of Columbia, Arlington/Falls Church/Alexandria
Includes the cities: Washington, Alexandria, Falls Church
Tonight…Snow. Snow accumulation of 4 to 8 inches. Brisk with lows in the lower 20s. North winds 20 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.
Monday…Cloudy. Snow likely in the morning…Then a chance of snow in the afternoon. Additional snow accumulation around an inch. Total snow accumulation 7 to 8 inches. Brisk with highs in the mid 20s. Northwest winds 20 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. Chance of snow 70 percent.
Hour by Hour, as of 4:30PM EST Sunday. Click for full sized image
By the time Partly Cloudy skies appear about 3PM Monday, there will be about 4-8″ of snow on the ground in DC.
Plus, in New York City, where Jim Hansen would likely depart from, they also have a Winter Storm Warning in effect to 6PM Monday with forecast of:
WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST MONDAY
Includes the Counties: Hudson, New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Richmond (Staten Island), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens Tonight…Snow developing this evening…Heavy at Times. Snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches. Windy with lows in the mid 20s. North winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.
Monday…Snow in the morning…Then snow likely in the afternoon. Snow May be heavy at Times in the morning. Total snow accumulation of 8 to 12 inches. Windy. Near steady temperature in the mid 20s. North winds 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.
If Hansen hasn’t left NYC already, I’d say it is doubtful he’ll even make the protest given it is a Monday, and Monday’s are usually pretty bad commutes even without bad weather. Looks like it is going to be a…
More on the DC weather story form Justin Berk, Baltimore Weather Examiner
I interrupt the snowstorm updates to bring you this pressing issue. Monday, March 2nd 2009 is the date for a scheduled protest by Capitol Climate Action (CCA).
Heavy snow expected at the Nation’s Capitol on Monday
Their website labels it:
Mass civil disobedience at the coal fired power plant in Washington, DC
CCA claims this will be the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in US history. There is actually a request to wear dress clothes. That seems odd. Is this a target to get young Americans in a vogue protest?
My forecast from this morning can be found here (I will have a new update by this evening). If you go just by the NWS forecast, then snow will range between 5-10 inches with wind gusts over 30 mph. The snowstorm forecast is ironic not only because it falls on the date of this protest, but also because it is a late season event. The normal high for the date in Washington, DC is 51F. What would be worse: Keep the protest on in the snowstorm, or cancel it because of the snowstorm?
The infamous Dr. James Hansen should be there leading the charge. My post last week about 2008 being the coldest year this decade included a reference to Hansen. I wrote, “This is the same man who turned off the air conditioning in the Capitol while speaking about Global Warming on a hot day in 1988.” I also mentioned his exposure of bad data for Russia just this past October. He used September data (a statistically warmer month) in place of cooler October data. This skewed the temperatures upward.
I don’t knock him for his extreme beliefs, but I do disagree with the questionable tactics he uses to get his message across. According to Fox News , he is in hot water since he works for NASA, yet is helping to organize a protest.
It seems like the Climate Crew has had some trouble getting their messages across. It’s almost as if mixed signals are coordinated by nature itself. Marc Marano, Communications Director for the GOP on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) sent out a list of events that seem to follow the Gore Effect. This was labeled by Politico.com as:
The so-called Gore Effect happens when a global warming-related event, or appearance by the former vice president and climate change crusader, Al Gore, is marked by exceedingly cold weather or unseasonably winter weather.
Check out this list courtesy of Marc Marano:
Note: The “Gore Effect” has a long and storied history. What follows is a sampling of how Mother Nature enjoys mocking global warming fear promoters.
1) First October snow since 1922 blankets London as global warming bill debated – October 2008
3) HOUSE HEARING ON ‘WARMING OF THE PLANET’ CANCELED AFTER SNOW/ICE STORM – February 2007
4) NOT AGAIN! DC ‘Snow Advisory’ Issued on Day of Congressional Global Warming Hearing – March 2007
5) Gore decries ‘global warming’ in bitterly cold NYC – December 2006
9) Global warming protest in Maryland frosted with snow – January 2008
10) Global warming rally in the snow – April 2007
11) Snow won’t dampen global-warming rallies – April 2007
13) Global Warming Awareness Walk Braves Snow Storm – March 2007
14) The Gore Effect, Cont. – Gore speaks in Italy during ‘rare’ cold and snow
15) Tracking ‘The Gore Effect’ – Politico November 26,6, 2008
16) Climate protest cancelled ‘due to rain and cold’ – Nov. 23, 2008
That storm just rolled through western NC and I have 7″ of global warming on my deck….
Bill McClure (21:01:25) :
@E.M.Smith (16:28:29
Great comment especially on how pseudonyms are used
Thanks! I’ve just spent too much of my life being: a) in computer security. and b) Involved with the internet ( starting with a 300 baud line over an acoustic coupler with a Hazeltine Terminal! Lets just say “I’ve been around…” )
Slamdunk (17:09:30) : E.M. Smith gets a blue ribbon for “Idiocracy,” a demented (socialistic) form of government within our Republic.
Um, I was just quoting Crosspatch. Blue ribbon goes to him:
crosspatch (14:30:23) : It is fascinating. I never believed that so many people could be so gullible. Fooling all of the people isn’t required. You only need to fool enough to get elected. I fear we are fast becoming an idiocracy.
BTW, TWC reporting “Monster Storm” and snowfall heading over DC into Philadelphia. “Locally heavy snow”. But expected to clear about lunchtime. What do you want to bet that the snowplows will be followed by the street sweepers about 1-2 pm just in time for the photo op?
i love your posts E.M.Smith.
I am mercurior have been for 8 long years now.. looking at the groups who endorse that Action. call me a cynic but i beleive they are only jumping onto the band wagon. and some have an ulterior motive, some are from Wind power solutions. if they stop all coal power plants, then we will have to rely on solar. and wind and..so on.
There are also religous groups supporting it as well. Now i have problems with actors promoting such things. They are just names and if you notice a lot of them have no career, daryl hannah, mike farrell.
a little more research and you will see some of the organisations are linked. different name same organisation essentially.
CoalSwarm and the Center for Media and Democracy, for example they share the same wiki. are they individuals or seperates..
Winston Churchill was a very perceptive man, and one of his quotes is very applicable to the situation we are in with AGW and GW.
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Winston Churchill.
I think ‘The Truth’ is at last getting close having it’s pants done up 🙂
Mike Bryant (20:08:46) : I agree that humor, with truth, and a very light hint of ridicule, is a potent weapon against pompous bullies. It’s pretty difficult to preach and coerce when your audience is laughing at you.
More and more people are starting to realize that the emperor is as naked as a jaybird. When the laughter begins, the end of the deception will be at hand.
Oh, so true! I’ve taken to making sarcastic remarks per AGW to random folks on cold days to gauge the general public response to AGW. For example, today, going to the grocery store (cold, blustery, sporadic rain). Muttered to an old guy as we both headed for the doorway “Any more global warming like this and I’m going to be frozen and drowned”. He just smiled.
I have yet to have a single person respond in support of AGW…
I recommend the exercise. You ought to be pleasantly surprised at the degree of skepticism that is hiding under the public veneer.
I’ve also used “If this kind of Global Warming keeps up, I’m going to need a better coat!” and “I don’t think I can take any more global warming like this – maybe I need to move somewhere warmer…” and “If this is Global Warming, then I don’t want to see what cooling is like!” You get the idea…
Love the Soviet Realist style of the poster.
Who says that the AGW crowd doesn’t have a sense of political irony?
http://www.earthcam.com/usa/dc/metrosquare/
It is now snowing, 6:39 am local , windy too.
Well after watching the live cam of Washington D.C I think that if I was protester with plans of going there I would have my bowl of lentils and hop back under my crochet blanket. I can’t see the big white building for all the global warming flakes..
The idea of disrupting power production during cold temperatures seems extremely dangerous to me.
Here in the UK, we hear plenty of horror stories about the elderly freezing to death because they can’t afford the cost of electricity, let alone because of the supply of it, and we have generally mild weather!
I’m sure there are plenty of contingencies in place and supply won’t be effected,even if their blockade is successful, but the sheer callousness and perverseness of this action is pretty shocking.
It seems they have a moral choice to make, abandon at least the civil disobedience part, and admit energy supply is more important than their “moral” crusade, or give yet more proof that there is nothing moral about their crusade in the first place.
http://www.capitolclimateaction.org/
I am confused. They are encouraging live blogging from the protest and yet they have disabled all comments???
I guess they do not want people blogging, “We are having a great time at the protest, but it is FREEEZING here. I never knew global warming would be so cold!!!”
I was looking at the live weather cam feed earlier, The snow had stopped and It looked like a crisp, fresh fall of thin snow on the ground. But now I cannot see too much for the heavy snow falling.
These guys really do NOT have a sense of humor do they?
I wonder how many global warming protesters will be hospitalised with frostbite?
Ross (00:34:21) :
E.M.Smith (15:01:56) :
You just gotta love it!
BTW, I’ve put up my top level tour of the STEP0 process in GIStemp
I understood maybe three words at your gistemp link, but I would like to thank you for all the effort and knowledge you are putting into this work. Maybe the rest of us will yet have a realistic view of what Hansen is really doing thanks to you.
Thank you for the kind words. I have a couple of different ‘styles’. The one you see here most is the ‘low jargon explainer’. But there are times that ‘full on tech’ is needed; mostly of talking to other techs and programmers.
The GIStemp series of articles is directed at the other computer programmers of the world (or code-hacker wannabees) who just can’t work up the effort it takes to slog through GIStemp cold. It’s a helping hand. A packed trail they can slide their skis down with less effort.
It also puts pointers in for where I smell something funny, so other folks with programming skill can put focus on that bit, without the need to dig through a few dozen pages to discover it.
And frankly, I’m hoping someone else will hop on it too. The process is a bit draining all by myself. Especially when I hit the next bit. It is written in a language called “Python” that I can sort of figure out, maybe, I think.
At any rate, I’ll be adding other non-tech style pages, so there are things that are not so hard to slog through. For example:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/so_many_thermometers_so_little_time/
basically is a map of the age distribution of thermometers with a comment about how it looks hard to me to get realistic trends longer than about 70 years out of that map. (A great topic for an Anthony article. HINT HINT! ) Also the huge density in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world ‘puts the lie’ to Hansens claim that manipulations of the US data are not going to influence the global average much.
And in:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/china-where-coal-turns-to-money/
I compare two graphs. One of Chinese income growth, the other a map of who produces how much coal. It’s not a coincidence.
There will be others like this. Short. Pithy. Non-technobabble 😉
mercurior (03:20:44) :
i love your posts E.M.Smith.
Thank you!
I am mercurior have been for 8 long years now.. looking at the groups who endorse that Action. call me a cynic but i beleive they are only jumping onto the band wagon.
There is always a large ‘band wagon’ effect. Works great up until the first time the music stops… Band wagons don’t play well in the snow 8-}
[…] They are just names and if you notice a lot of them have no career, daryl hannah, mike farrell.
I don’t know if unemployed actors do this to get in the papers, or if being an over the top advocate kills careers (due to public rejection) but there is some kind of correlation.
a little more research and you will see some of the organisations are linked. different name same organisation essentially. CoalSwarm and the Center for Media and Democracy, for example they share the same wiki. are they individuals or seperates..
Yeah, I’ve noticed that the Loony Left does a great job of marketing. Lots of names, lots of big sounding organization. Lots of glitz and star darlings. But actual turnout is usually low. Over representation of liberal arts types, I think.
The Radical Right doesn’t do that nearly so well; yet when Something Needs Doing a large groundswell just happens. More farmers, cooks, builders, cops, shovel jockeys, drivers… ‘doers’ of all sorts (military guys and gals especially – none of use could sleep at night but for them…).
As my Texas Uncle would say “Them Lefties, they are all hat and no cattle”. Not a guy to cross (was a guard/staff at a prison for most of his career…) but if you ever need anything, he’s there with it before you realized you needed it and nothing needs to be said. “No sense sayin’ when you need to be doin’ ” and “You gonna flap your lips all day or we gonna get this done?”
Me being from the Left Coast he has his ‘concerns’ about me 8-0 but we get along rather well. (I just don’t discuss my opinions on Certain Things…) It’s hell being from the middle of the bird… both sides want to toss rocks at you 😉
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kessler/martin-sheen-paul-hawken_b_170014.html
Quote from link above: “It is no small thing to stand up when so many others are still sitting down–especially when it may mean personally risking arrest. More than 2500 people will take this stand on March 2. Will you stand with them?”
Will Hansen stand with them in the snow?
2500? Wasn’t this supposed to be “the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history.”?
This is how Obama politics look like.
If he continues this policy, we will have a REVOLUTION in no time.
From the article regarding the Washington DC protests:
“This movement is supported by the President of the United States himself.
The first two speakers at the opening rally of Power Shift ’09 on Friday night were senior administration members, Obama appointees. They sounded very similar to the young activists they were addressing”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/03/obama_crowd_power.html
The media will no doubt portray this ridiculous “protest” as a huge success. So someone should take a few pictures of this globaloney rally, to show the truth. I doubt that there will be anywhere near 2,500 idiots freezing their butts off on a work day. Stalinist style posters can’t compete with the reality of frigid temperatures cooling down a global warming protest.
Re: maksimovich (15:21:39) :
Steven Goddard (14:43:36) :
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-Albert Einstein
The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Isaac Newton
Scientists do not change. Was not this Newton quote a way by which he was saying that his work was based on galileo etc and had nothing to do with arch rival Robert Hooke who was of a very short stature!
tallbloke (01:12:07) :
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Effect”
Any chance of adding the webcam link to the wikki entry for one day only? As of 07:30 am, Washington is clearly demonstrating the ‘Gore Effect’!
“http://www.earthcam.com/usa/dc/metrosquare/”
Anthony,
The previous posting is very worrying.
It will not take long before every Government policy will be forced upon the people via pressure and blackmail of Obama’s (Green) Movement.
I think this is unacceptable.
I wonder why we even took the trouble to win the cold war?
This kind of actions will divide the American People in the streets of our cities.
It will also create a divide between generations, students and workers.
We have seen this before in history and in most cases it ended with monuments to rember the events and honor the dead.
It’s about 7:30 just outside of DC.
I’ve got at least 6-7 inches on my patio, the traffic cams are showing snow on all the major arteries, and the schools are closed. They’re expecting the snow to continue to about 10 o’clock.
Ironically, we’ve barely had an inch of snow all winter till now.
Just south of Fredericksburg, VA: ~7.5 inches of snow, 23 F, & still snowing.
However, I am sure this datum will be “Hansenized” using the “Al-gore-thm” to make this the warmest & driest March 2nd on record… 😉
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/mother-nature-will-not-be-mocked/
This is comedy gold!!!
Yes at 8:00am across the river from DC, we are still getting snow. I don’t think a protest will have an effect on anything today, mother nature beat them to it. Go to wtop.com and check out the traffic cams arond downtown DC.
DC is indeed snowed out right now!
http://www.earthcam.com/usa/dc/metrosquare/
And I’ve updated the Gore Effext Wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Effect
The snowstorm that saved America a trillion bucks??
Seems that they are going ahead with this. Should be interesting.
“Of course it’s still on! We expect 2,500 dedicated activists to stand tall at the Capitol Power Plant and demonstrate that the course of history bends toward progress.”
I think that progress is the opposite of what they want to achieve.