Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
Punxsutawney Phil is held by Ben Hughes after emerging this morning from his burrow on Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney. Phil saw his shadow and forecast six more weeks of winter weather.
Don’t put those cold weather clothes in storage just yet.
Punxsutawney Phil, the internationally known weather prognosticating groundhog, saw his shadow this morning and predicted six more weeks of winter.
Thousands gathered on Gobbler’s Knob in Jefferson County to await the groundhog’s annual prediction. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club said Phil has seen his shadow 98 times since 1887, hasn’t seen it 15 times, and there are no records for nine years.
Read more: http://www.pittsburghpost-gazette.com/pg/10033/1032831-258.stm#ixzz0eOp1FisE
Phillip Bratby (10:04:16) :
OT.
Statement from CRU about Jones and Wang at http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
This piece smelled of “set-em-up-and-knock-em-down” as soon as I saw Fred Pearce and “WUWT tipped off” in the same vicinity.
………to keep the humour going , try here.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
Scroll down to the second story !
fFreddy (09:30:37) : “Any data on how [Punxsutawney Phil] correlates with subsequent weather ?”
Check the IPCC’s AR4. They’ve referenced plenty of other folk tales…
Great post from the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/01/climate-change-university-east-anglia?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:66863d5a-dd4d-404d-8548-e848de5ec43f
What on earth is Phil Jones on about?
“One newspaper claimed Professor Jones withheld information from sceptic Douglas Keenan, who queried data from Chinese weather stations used in a 1990 study on global warming.
Professor Jones said he was confident the paper, which drew on 42 urban and 42 rural sites, was correct because it was validated by the new data…
…The later study showed an average 0.1C warming per decade due to urbanisation and 0.15C of climate warming each decade between 1951 and 2004”
(from channel4 – http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+email+row+scientists+speak+out/3524137)
Isn’t 0.1C per decade the same as 1C per century?
So the original paper by Jones and Wang discovered a UHI of 0.1C per decade?
This is the paper that the IPPC cited as evidence of a negligible UHI effect?
At least Groundhogs speak proper Groundhogese and not gobbledygook.
Steve Goddard (09:33:58) :
NCEP agrees. Looks like The White House is going to have a large heating bill this month, as they hammer out Cap and Trade legislation to stop runaway global warming.
It’s more like global warming got hammered, saw Phil’s shadow the next morning and ran away.
Here are some news of the weather that has been:
Stockholm, Sweden, has just experienced a month of January without a single day] with temperatures above 0°C. This is the first time this has happened since…..
……..1829.
Some weather!
(The Swedish meterological institute started to measure temperatures in Stockholm in 1756.)
Sort of off the subject but good to know: If you want to know about the latest news regarding the Winter Olympics, read this link.
http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blogs.asp?partner=rss&blog=2010-winter-games&pgurl=/mtweb/content/2010-winter-games/archives/2010/02/not_the_first_time_for_snow_concerns.asp
This will not be the first Olympics dealing with not enough snow, as they’ve had snow shortages a number of times before with one such time back in 1932. So any alarmism during the games will be misplaced because this isn’t the first time and will likely not be the last.
It seems to me that the fellow holding Phil has a rather goofy look on his face as if he is checking out Phil’s thermometer.
George Monbiot, thinks
“The hacked emails shows that Phil Jones, after 20 years of failing to issue a correction, isn’t the only one who should resign”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails
Anyway, My Granddad on my mom’s side (passed away in 1954, I could still set on his knee then) always said that if the ground hog saw his shadow we would have 6 more weeks of winter, if not we would only have a month and a half. My nearly 62 years of experiance confirms his observations.
Methinks it would be more humane to replace the MET office with a robot, a groundhog, or possibly a small chipmunk:
http://tinyurl.com/ygkaybm
It’s sad that I would trust a groundhog more than many scientist when it comes to predicting the weather!
Okay, Phil is alive so it is obviously raw data but since he is pulled out of his hole by a man instead of coming out on his own isn’t the data manipulated too?
AleaJactaEst (09:23:29) :
“More heavy global warming in Aberdeen, Scotland these last few days.
The Met Office confirms that putting the months of December 2009 and January 2010 together gives us the coldest period we’ve had since 1963”
I wish it had been as warm as that. In fact December and January were the coldest in Scotland since records began.
In 1914!!!!
I understand that Texas was going to unveil a climate predicting armadillo to compete with the Yankee rodent Phil. Unfortunately, it froze to death last month.
Where is the missing 9 years of data?
Well? Where is it Phil?
>>
REPLY: You aren’t supposed to get hard numbers from this, given that the forecast is using “fuzzy” logic. – A
<<
In deference to those who think it is “furry” logic. I think “shadow” logic seems more to the point.
Jim
Another Phil popped his head out today.
“UEA e-mails leak climate scientist defends his work”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/8494497.stm
“I feel tremendously pressurised by all this but I’m trying to continue my work in the science,” he said.
Is that atmospheric pressurization?
“Thousands gathered on Gobbler’s Knob in Jefferson County to await the groundhog’s annual prediction. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club said Phil has seen his shadow 98 times since 1887, hasn’t seen it 15 times, and there are no records for nine years.”
Can we have some trend calculations on this?
Frank K. (11:39:25) :
Here you go.
http://i47.tinypic.com/jhdmz5.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/ih8wtx.jpg
I always figured that regardless of shadow or no shadow, that Spring would arrive on the Spring Equinox in about 6 weeks (well 7 but, hey this is prognostication right?).
D. King (12:44:27) :
Where is the missing 9 years of data?
Well? Where is it Phil?
OK…OK! I was moving to my new digs and lost the
old data, but it doesn’t undermine the underlying
science behind my predictions!
Now we have proof that a groundhog is more robust than any IPCC or Met Office official.
I officially attest that groundhogs are edible, and very much so, especially with onions. We roasted one on campfire in Tian Shan mountains when I was about 14 years old. Probably a bit different species than the American one but it looked pretty much the same. Now PETA will come and burn my house.