Guest post by Steven Goddard
“April comes in like a lion, and stays that way.”
The University Of Colorado in Boulder and nearby Colorado State University are hotbeds of climate science activity. Famous climate names from both sides of the AGW aisle like NCAR, NSIDC, the Pielkes, Bill Gray and Chris Landsea are associated with these universities. Earlier this extended winter WUWT reported on one forecast by a CU geography professor :
University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas
No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future, and that 25 years from now the climate will make a radical switch. It appears that Dr. Williams forecast is correct so far, as Colorado is getting lots of snow.
Wolf Creek Ski Area has received more than 11 metres of snow this winter, and has 118 inches of snow on the ground. (That would be 2.9972 metres deep, using the Catlin tape measure.) Unfortunately, people may be unable to get to most of the ski areas because Interstate 70 is shut down – due to too much snow.
Ahead of the current storm, all of the snowtel sites in Colorado were reporting normal snowpack.
| RIVER BASIN | PERCENT OF AVERAGE | ||
| Snow Water | Accum | ||
| GUNNISON RIVER BASIN | 109 | 108 | |
| UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN | 112 | 109 | |
| SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN | 98 | 97 | |
| LARAMIE AND NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASINS | 103 | 105 | |
| YAMPA AND WHITE RIVER BASINS | 113 | 109 | |
| ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN | 107 | 99 | |
| UPPER RIO GRANDE BASIN | 104 | 107 | |
| SAN MIGUEL, DOLORES, ANIMAS & SAN JUAN | 95 | 10 | |
One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/hprcc/MonthTDeptHPRCC.png
Of course, weather is not climate and the earth has a 50/50 chance of “tipping” in the future – due to reaching some mythical CO2 threshold.
On a more urgent note, a US Navy researcher from told the Beeb that projections of an ice free Arctic by 2013 may be “too conservative.”
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
(This California based researcher did not accompany the Catlin expedition on their -40C Arctic camping trip this spring.)
Polar Bear pondering how cap-and-trade may brighten it’s future?
If you want to save the ski industry and the polar bears, you might want to consider sending Al Gore some money – and please quit producing so much of that dangerous pollutant CO2. However, absolutely do not try to apologize to the bears in person. Skiing is much more fun and generally safer than swimming with polar bears, as this woman visiting the Berlin Zoo found out.
PHOTO: WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
I just don’t know how to get to any ski areas without making lots of CO2.
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“Using a picture of a human being suffering grievous injuries in the way you have done is spectacularly nasty. Do you know what empathy is?”
Doesn’t it mean understanding and entering into another’s feelings? So because we all feel so bad about hurting your feelings here’s this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24012529/
Just imagine that he’s saying,
“I’m sorry that my mommy bit you… next time read the sign and stay out of our cage.
Love,
Flocke”
Steven,
Of course repeated periods of glaciation have produced some large temperature excursions.
But do you agree with Smokey that we are currently in a cooling trend?
Beware that in many cities with a longer than 50 years temperature record, the time used to see if records have been broken has been sheared off.
If your city has a 100 year run of data, then 1st 50 years are removed.
If you look at the extremes for your city, don’t expect to see anything recorded prior to 1950.
There will be nothing to tell you that it was hotter in the ’30’s.
Unless, of course, you are smart enough to know where to find the earlier data or kept your own archive.
Sneaky little buggers, eh?
Smokey and Stephen Goddard – well, it looks then like you don’t know what empathy is. Your apparent enjoyment of another human being’s suffering disgusts me.
Smokey,
I based my statement on the current warming on satellite data, the UAH time series, as endorsed by lead scientist Roy Spencer.
Let’s at least agree on the data first – do you stick by your assertion that the data suggests the the Earth is cooling?
.
Regards the polar bear incident in Berlin, this is simply another manifestation of the ‘nature is good, man is bad’ philosophy of the Greens. Such is their fervour, that followers really do believe that all animals are nice and fluffy creatures that you can pet like a domestic cat.
Here is another polar bear petter, this time in Alaska.
It is iconic images like this from Watchtower Magazine (Jehova’s Witness) that promote this abscence of reason and logic.
http://www.unc.edu/%7Eelliott/images/Beautiful_Surroundings.jpg
This loss of reason through religion is but one step away from setting out for the Arctic pole and expecting to find open water and a nice sheltered spot to sunbathe. Faith over reason.
.
If I may put on an AGW apologist hat one moment, an explain how AGW can lead to more snow….
“Higher surface temperature means more evaporation. Whenever evaporation increases, so does precipitation, in an equivalent amount. So, since the cyclic temperature patterns of “years” have yet to be annihilated by AGW (but just you wait!) some of that extra precipitation will, of course, fall as more snow.”
Of course, there are plenty of good responses to this. Mine is “huh, so annual cycles are still HUGE compared to ‘climate change’? LAWLZ!”
Oh, and as Steven Goddard points out above, its very much “cooling, warming, pick your time scale, it is easy to “prove” you are “right”.
Jack – the last few days snow in Colorado were due to an upslope condition, that is, low pressure over the Oklahoma panhandle sends moisture up the east side of the Rockies, therefore on the wrong (east) side of the continental divide to really help Lake Powell. Some moisture did leak over the divide, but the really heavy amounts were all in the foothills just west of Denver.
Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured. If it could be, it couldn’t be measured within the accuracy of the scale of the graph that you show. To then take these extremely dodgy scattered measurements and draw in a line to show which way they are going is as big a joke as trying to say where they will go in the next hundred years based on the output of even dodgier models. I’ve become a sceptic because of nonsense like this and have just started to believe what I see which is absolutely normal weather everywhere and none of the dreadful scenarios happening or looking like they ever will. I will change my mind if you can tell me why, when we have seen CO2 levels multiples higher than todays (up to 7000 ppm) that the actual temperatures were not what AGW would have predicted?
Tom in Texas,
You were close, it’s a Subaru, which is almost an igloo. 😉
Weather is not climate, until it is.
Tom P,
And your graph conveniently starts at the beginning of the 1980- warming period, then incorrectly attempts to fit linear regression line when clearly inappropriate. The issue at hand is whether there the current trend is cooling, not what the trend was during 1980-1998.
Once again, warmers have complete confidence in the high priests of climate science (those that drink AGW koolaid at least), but suffer from the most extreme confirmation bias and have completely lost the ability to think for themselves.
Philip_B (19:07:07) :
A warmer world is a wetter
Have you wonder why the sahara desert is desert while in front of the same sea in between SA it isn´t?
This is because the evaporation taking place in the middle goes westward due to the eastward movement of the earth. When the sea in the middle cools down it evaporate less…and so on.
This same phenomena happends in California, in front of a now cool sea. When PDO is in its warm phase it rains a lot over there, however these rains are partly stopped by the mountains at east.
So, in a general sense, global warming cannot bring droughts but a lot of rains where it used to, unless earth rotation changes (LOD).
“It is iconic images like this from Watchtower Magazine (Jehova’s Witness) that promote this abscence of reason and logic.
http://www.unc.edu/%7Eelliott/images/Beautiful_Surroundings.jpg
This loss of reason through religion is but one step away from setting out for the Arctic pole and expecting to find open water and a nice sheltered spot to sunbathe. Faith over reason.”
The picture you reference is not the JWs impression of life here on earth now, but rather an image of an Eden on earth that didn’t happen because of man’s fall. You will never see a JW climb into the cage of a dangerous animal.
Smokey:
“They’re saying ‘you just wait until next year when the climate catastrophe hits,’ and similar ravings.”
Really? “wait until next year”? Must be Cubs fans.
Fidel Castro said when predicting things, make it far enough in the future that you won’t be around to explain why it didn’t happen.
Most of the snow has melted. Wet, heavy. With incursion of water. Typical Colorado spring. As for weather data from the People’s Republic of Boulder (even they call it that) I wouldn’t count on any reliable information. They would repeal the law of gravity if someone said they were overweight.
“Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured.”
Of course it can.
“I will change my mind if you can tell me why, when we have seen CO2 levels multiples higher than todays (up to 7000 ppm) that the actual temperatures were not what AGW would have predicted?
Assuming that by AGW you mean climate models, the temperatures back in the epochs of very high CO2 concentrations were indeed what climate models have hindcast. What makes you think otherwise?
William Rice:
“The issue at hand is whether there the current trend is cooling”
If the errors are larger than the value you derive for a trend, then there is no trend. Over short periods of time – a few years – you cannot measure climate trends. Over appropriately long periods, there is a pronounced warming trend.
ralph ellis – looks like you are another person who takes pleasure from the suffering of other human beings.
Anthony Watts, Steven Goddard, smokey, ralph ellis – shame on you.
REPLY: I prefer to look at this as an “exercise in natural selection”.
The Darwinian lesson to the rest of the homo sapiens is: “polar bears are not cuddly”.
If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony
timetochooseagain,
Of course annual temperature cycles of many parts of the world are larger than current and proposed climate change. Are you saying that unless the Earth warms up by more than 20 deg F there’s nothing to worry about?
Martin Mason,
So how large a change would there have to be in order to measure a change in the average global temperature? Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer assert you can measure it accurately enough to say that we’ve seen warming over the last one hundred years of less than a degree. Are they all wrong?
William Rice,
UAH only began to collect data in 1979 and I include all data from then to date, not 1998 as you state. I can hardly be accused of selection here.
Contrary to what you claim, a simple linear regression is certainly a justified way of fitting the data as there is no significant increase in the correlation coefficient if a more complex fit is used.
If you think a linear regression is “clearly inappropriate”, please provide the analysis including a mathematical justification.
RW, look at Tsonis et al and the way that paper explains the temperature variations of the last century by the coupling and coupling of natural cycles, including the oceanic oscillations. Those are what determine climate, not CO2 level. We can expect two decades of cooling because of those oscillations while CO2 continues to rise and proves the lack of connection between CO2 and climate.
Observe the thermometers; they are not meaningless no matter what your definition of a trend is.
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“RW (07:17:41) :
Smokey and Stephen Goddard – well, it looks then like you don’t know what empathy is. Your apparent enjoyment of another human being’s suffering disgusts me.”
em·pa·thy n.
1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.
RW,
If you were really an empathetic person, you would identify with and understand Smokey and Stephen Goddard’s feelings. Don’t you see that they are really caring people who want only the best for Earth and her people? If you can’t understand and see the simple truth of their noble motives and feelings, perhaps you are not really an empathetic person.
Do you know the difference between “empathetic” and “pathetic”.
Mike Bryant
“Tom P, the average temperature of the surface of the earth can’t be measured.
OF COURSE IT CAN.”
Science By Haughty Assertion. And so’s your old man, BTW. 😉
Andrew
No more snow at Aspen? I knew it! This is really gonna jack up the price of a day pass. Maybe we should ask these geniuses if Santa has outfitted the sleigh with pontoons yet.
Adam from Kansas, I have relatives in Wichita. You’re right about the weather there. It always seemed colder there than my native Arkansas. Here’s an interesting note:
The highest recorded temperature for Wichita, KS is 98F. Can you guess when it was recorded? 1893. Must have been all the steamboats going up and down the Arkansas River. Do steamboats produce CO2?
Take care!
Sorry! Highest recorded temp for APRIL in Wichita! So sorry!
I suspect, RW, that it is those who’ve provoked inappropriate ’empathy’ with the ice bear who’ve created the potential for these disasters. Start placing blame where it belongs, or be marginalized in the blame game.
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