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.
kim,
Have you actually read Tsonis? He is somewhat concerned by how his work has been misunderstood by you and others: “There is going to be a shift upward, and together with the effects of greenhouse gases, it will make it really hot.”
Wonderful idea!!!!
I would like to propose that on an annual basis, we all indulge in our own WUWT Barbecue parties! Let us all make this a yearly celebration and celebrate the honest quest for truth and knowledge that persists on this site and other sites like this. I propose we do this the first weekend of July every year! And if Anthony would present an annual BBQ thread each year, we can all chat, tell stories of our parties and even present accurate (or not so accurate) data analysis of each of our experiences (grill temp, etc…).
I like this idea!
jack m (06:51:43) :
“Catliners have been swimming: Latest from the ice:
Crossing open water is now par for the course with polar travel. As spring progresses, b, meaning the frequency and size of leads increases. The emergence of open water at this stage of the survey is typical for this time of year and will become almost a daily occurrence towards the end of the expedition. So, today was a practice run for the days ahead….”
Did you happen to notice the posted temperature at -25C. So Catlin is advancing science… finding ice that melts at -25C. The world will be forever grateful.
Interesting that INGSOC seems to have confused me with Steven Goddard.
Steven, you get the credit for this one.
Mind you, it’s nice to have made an impression on someone !
RW 08:29:38
Sure there has been a warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age. The variations in that trend correlate with the alternating cooling and warming phases of the oceanic oscillations, and we are cooling now and probably for another two decades.
If you look at the last hundreds of thousands of years, there appears to be a correlation between temperature and CO2 level, with the temperature rise appearing before the CO2 rise. I’m curious what you would have to say about causation in that scenario.
If you look at the last hundreds of millions of years, there appears to be no correlation between temperature and CO2 level. I’m curious what you would have to say about causation in that scenario.
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RW (05:31:33) :”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?”
I know what empathy is. Empathy is laying awake at night worrying about children in third world countries dying of malnutrition while we burn food for fuel. I worry about marginal land put into growing corn for alcohol and the resulting fertilizer runoff. I worry about all the people who got sick or died because an earlier generation of alarmists banned DDT. Mostly I am concerned about great harm being done by incompetent and lazy “environmentalists” who impoverish others based on fraudulent science.
I have no empathy for someone who throws themselves into a bear cage. Few people do. Why do you thing that the “Darwin Awards” are so popular?
RW, said, “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?”
Climate models are perfect! Everyone knows that. In fact, all further federal monies should now be withdrawn from traditional climate science. The Climate models, now optimized to faithfully reproduce the climate of any era past or future, will now become commonplace. Google, within the next few weeks, will have a “skin” that will enable viewing the climate, positions of continents and the TSI, of the sun at any time or place on the Earth, from the “Big Bang” til our sun blinks out.
Now all, except one or two, of the climate scientists have been made redundant by software. The federal and worldwide budget for climate studies will effectively disappear! The science is settled.
Why was the lady there? Something tells me that she was not where she should have been. Therefore, I cannot feel much empathy towards her. Stupid people doing stupid things get what they deserve. “Stupid is as stupid does”.
“If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony”
So, just to be clear, you are confirming that you do indeed enjoy the suffering of other human beings?
REPLY: No that’s YOUR interpretation. And I advise that you do not slander me or the others by conflating your interpretation with theirs or mine.
Mine is that this is an instructive event illustrating natural selection, and that it is valuable to show because of the overhyping of the polar bears in the Arctic with things like Gores AIT, which has not come with the requisite reminders that:
1) Polar bears are carnivoires.
2) Polar bears are not cuddly nor in need of personal human interaction.
3) Captive polar bears are just as dangerous as ones encountered in the wild.
4) Anyone who ignores 1-3 because they are “concerned” about them, will get a lesson in natural selection. i.e. “survival of the fittest”. In this case the woman was not intellectually fit.
Her injury, while tragic, is also a useful lesson to those whom may be contemplating such interactions.
Again if this offends you, it is not my concern. Nature is cruel and cares not for our emotions. – Anthony
Sorry to disagree with you here RW, but GCM’s cannot “hindcast” anything. They are unidirectional and do not run backwards. GCM’s only fit past climate because they have been “pre-fit” to do so. That is their starting point. They are plugged and adjusted to fit past climate in an attempt to “predict” future climate, and therefore cannot “hindcast”. Further, GCM’s have been tweaked and plugged to fit as closely to past climate as possible, and because of the extreme divergence from model to observation, it can be said that their “predictive” skills are very much lacking.
If people don’t know science, one thing they do know is snow and cold. If you are going to use fraud the perpetrate the warm myth, your timing was really bad this time around. The same thing happened to the ‘ice age is coming, for sure’ of the 1970s. The sun and nature outfoxed you again.
CAP-N-TAX will have to wait for warmer weather.
Does anyone ever bring up the fallacy of paying more in taxes to the government, how exactly does that fix the climate?
Who in the world could believe the earth is not cooling now????
I always liked the story of Niels Bohr, who after criticizing Einstein for years for a certain thing Einstein said was true, and was obvious to Bohr that it was not, that after it was confirmed and Bohr finished reading about the confirming said, “What fools we all have been!” Really, he should have said “What a fool I have been!”
The earth is cooling. Believe the temperature data and the solar activity now or feel like a fool later.
H.R. (06:35:21) : I’ll be holding the first annual WUWT Barbeque the first week of July.[…]
Inspired by the Catlin survey, I will make it a scientific barbecue and record the temperature on my grill
Perhaps you could mount a couple of thermometers at different distances (up and down wind) from the BBQ and near the most masonry with solar exposure and make a representative “anomaly map” of what a BBQ party does to an area! Heck, you could even watch the temperatures change as folks lean on the thermometers, spill beer on them, all the usual BBQ activities… (Wonder how they react to Uncle Phils Phire Sauce …. 😉
Inspired, I’m going to dig out my 100% charCOAL briquette BBQ. (Yes, charcoal has real coal in it! Along with some char…) and I’m even going to burn some 10:1 feed ratio BEEF on it…
Tom P-it would depend on the exact nature of the warming how much would be bad, however, you seem to miss the point of what I was say which was that, at present, the changes we are “measuring” are petty small compared with normal weather behavior. It is amusing, therefore, to hear people say that this or that weather event was “caused” by climate change. That is nonsensical. It is moreover extremely nonsensical to claim that we are seeing catastrophic affects when the changes are still so small. Does this rule out future catastrophes, as you inferred was my meaning (but I didn’t actually mean)? No, it does not. It is just laughable however that you think a 20 degree rise is even possible.
RW-Hansen would disagree with your notion that the surface temperature of the Earth can be measured:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
“RW (09:21:14) :
“If the normal course of nature laid bare by an individual of questionable intelligence offends you, to that I say: “tough noogies”. – Anthony”
So, just to be clear, you are confirming that you do indeed enjoy the suffering of other human beings?”
RW,
No one here enjoys human suffering. So please stop being so insufferable. Your paen to empathy has become only pathetic. Give it up. You have lost this one. Crawl back in your hole and come back when you can make some sense.
Mike
PS I am offended that you did not include me in your list of offenders. What gives?
Anthony, well said! I just cannot understand the stupidity, arrogance and selfishness of people. Hello, that bear is a wild animal! It probably does not like being held captive as a sightseeing spectacle (akin to public humiliation) and would much rather be out on the Arctic ice sheets hunting seals. If there is any empathy here, I would have to place my empathy with the Polar Bear. He had lunch firmly in his grasp, and someone has taken it away from him, and all in front of spectators and camera’s. Talk about humiliation. I just don’t understand why people can be so naive about our natural world. We live in a violent universe that doesn’t care two cents about any of us. Get a clue…
Tom P (5:54)
I find it useful to look at data and ask myself what is the most honest interpretation. Regarding the data you attached. To me it looks like three overlapping segments. The first from the start to about 1996 looks pretty level. The second segment from about 1993 to 2003 shows a rise, from about 2003 to the end again looks level. Mathematically I can’t explain it, but I am not sure that the average global temperature over 30 years will fit into a mathematical equation.
The slope of the line on the figure would correspond to about 1.3 C/century. Is this what we are worried about? What do we expect global average temperature to do over 100 years, with or without man’s help? Do you think actual warming will be more than this, or is the line about accurate? Should we wait a few years? The line keeps going up, but if actual temperatures continue level or trend downward, wouldn’t that be significant?
Tom P 09:05:15
He predicts cooling then warming then cooling. And since he doesn’t know the effect of CO2 on climate, his predictions about its effect can only be conjectural. For sure, its effect is not as high as the IPCC, or Hansen or Gore would have you believe. And, if the feedback of water vapor to the initial forcing by CO2 is negative, then the effect of CO2 will be cooling.
So how about we make the effort to figure out what the real effect of CO2 is on climate? That would need skepticism about the present science. All good, I’d say.
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Anthony, however, I must disagree with
I don’t think any of this is tragic at all, injuries or otherwise. In fact, she should just be thankful she is still alive. In point of fact, “she got away with one”. Even a blind squirrel gets an acorn once in a while.
Patrick (07:43:53) Just down the road from Aspen, and 1200 ft lower we had several hours of great rain Thursday night into Saturday, so the Front range didn’t get all the precipitation.
RW,
I can assure you that whatever gave her the motivation for diving in a Polar Bear tank did not come from AGW skeptics. However, one could probably make a case for blaming alarmists who have created the symbol of cuddly Polar Bears to push their agenda among children.
40 years ago, everyone understood that bears are extremely dangerous. Too bad the public sensibility has been so perverted. Please give your pointless distraction a rest. I suggest that you watch the amazing BBC series “Planet Earth” if you want to see what cruelty in nature is all about. Just the scenes of violence in the lives of corals and starfish alone are absolutely astonishing.
Slander? Interesting accusation. You are gratuitously using an image of a human being in the process of suffering grievous injuries during an apparent suicide attempt. It doesn’t illustrate any point that you are trying to make. It is simply spectacularly nasty. You might as well show a still of someone jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and encourage people to laugh at them, or link to the images of R. Budd Dwyer shooting himself.
REPLY: You are out of line sir, and spectacularly wrong. The reasons have been explained. Since you are obviously closed minded and judgmental, this will be your last missive on the subject. – Anthony
Steven Goddard:
I can assure you that whatever gave her the motivation for diving in a Polar Bear tank did not come from anything remotely related to global warming. The use of the image is thus purely gratuitous.
REPLY: Be sure to tell that to all the thousands of other websites and blogs that have used that image:
Google Results 1 – 10 of about 140,000 for “woman polar bear Berlin suicide”
As I said, we aren’t going to waste any more time on this. You have your opinion, we disagree, move on. – Anthony
But they do have a carbon tax!
This plan coming soon to a town near you!
The carbon tax bill for an industrial customer is about 1/2 the pay of a minimum wage worker.
Larry
Wolf Creek Ski Area is in Southwestern Colorado and received 21 inches of snow from the latest storm.
Any snow that falls east of the Continental Divide means less water being pumped to Denver from west of the Continental Divide, thus it does benefit Colorado River flow.