Hmmmmmm…. curiouser and curiouser. Thanks for the regular posts on old Sol Anthony, Joe, Jan, and Lief! Sincerely – Thank You and Merry Christmas to all of the good folks that make WattsUpWithThat such an enjoyable and unique success!
Richard says:
December 23, 2010 at 10:43 am
Q: “Whose afraid of the big bad snow and ice?”
A: Anyone who has lived and worked outdoors through severe northern winters, that’s who!!!
When the frost in the ground goes deeper than the water supply lines to your house and livestock barns (+4 feet!), life becomes very hard and fear is your neighbor. When you must work bare handed to fix an essential something and you risk frostbite, fear looks over your shoulder. When you must have electric heaters for your car battery and engine block to get it to start on a -30F night, fear of a power failure or finding an available electrical socket is a reality. When the power grid goes down and the electric circulating pumps or blowers on your furnace won’t run, I’m afraid you better have a back up plan!
When the snow piled high on your barn, garage, and house roofs approaches their structural load limits, you had damn well better be afraid… and get your ‘afraid of heights’ butt up there and clear it off! When you must use your farm tractor to punch a path through the drifting to the point of impassable roads and provide escort so an ambulance team can care for a neighbor heart attack victim, fear for their survival is at the fore. For anyone stranded in ‘white out’ blizzard conditions, life approaches the terminal point and fear stares you in the face.
I grew up in these conditions and these are my experiences. I have survived in brutal winter conditions that can kill less prepared and less fearful individuals. From unforgiving experiences, I know there is far more to fear from “big bad snow and ice”, be it ‘weather’ or ‘climate change’ induced, than there will ever be from 3C of ‘global warming’.
In my experience, it is usually those scoffing and ‘unafraid’ folks like Richard that get stranded in the worst conditions. They either die or get rescued by others who put themselves at risk to save their sorry butts.

ARSE or Anthropogenic Remedial Solar Effect.
As all the ice caps have now gone and melted the cold has escaped into space, cooling the Sun. In order to maintain thermal equilibrium the CO2 molecules multiply ( proton genesis ) and so the Earth heats up, causing it to snow everywhere. The snow melts and the vicious cycle continues.
You can purchase your compulsory Solar Credits at taxnfleece.com

phlogiston, thanks for the great sarcastic reply to Reeves and Thornhill so I don’t have to, (unless it keeps on coming, that is!)

wayne says:
December 23, 2010 at 2:29 pm
One does what one can for king and country.
Dave Springer says:
December 23, 2010 at 11:18 am
@anthony
Do you think we’re in for an increase in La Ninas due to the solar slumber?
They cause droughts here in Texas. Bad ones. This one is no exception. California gets the floods instead. I’d rather have floods than droughts.
According to Bob Tisdale’s excellent recent ENSO analysis here, there are periodic flips between el Nino dominated and La Nina dominated periods, about 30-35 years long each, going back more than a century and without any obvious help from solar activity. While Bob meticulously avoids getting drawn into predictions, the clear implication is that we are just starting a new La Nina dominant phase. Perhaps a quiet sun will add something to this.

Rhyl Dearden says:
December 23, 2010 at 1:18 pm
“I worry about the effects of cold because it impedes the growth of crops, and starvation can happen if growing period is too short. Warming extends range of crop land, cooling contracts it and while there was starvation during the LIA think what it will be like this time – how much food reserves are there in the world? Already large numbers of people are on inadequate diets.”
Quite right.
I think we can withstand any number of harsh winters – as long as each one is followed by an adequate growing season.
A single, global “year without a summer” – such as happened in 1816 – would be catastrophic almost beyond imagination.

This can all be explained by the recently discovered “Gore Effect”

And the predictions are for a Dalton minimum? hmmm.
I wonder what triggers a glaciation ice age?
So the AGW lies broke the sun 🙂

1) The Earth has seen “extreme” temperature swings.
2) The Earth has only one “energy” source. (besides its core).
To deny the Sun as the driver, even though we orbit in its “gravity hole”, seems to defy logic.
Ya gotta love it !!!

@Zeke

I see. A mental temperature gradient graph is easy for anyone to picture. And is it normal for such incredibly steep temperature troughs to exist as a body radiates heat? Can you give any examples in nature of an incredibly cool surface sandwiched between such enormous temperatures? What is keeping the heat from filling in that trough?
Your comment is very dismissive of this tenuous 3 million degree corona; I think you would miss it a little here on earth if it were gone.

Zeke, you’re missing the point. “Temperature is not energy”. In this case it’s the “kinetic temperature” of the fast-moving molecules in the corona:

1/2mv² = 3/2kT

where v is the average speed. Yes, theoretically, even a single molecule could have a million-degree temperature if it moved fast enough. But temperature only makes sense in a useful way in very large distributions of mass.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/kintem.html
The total mass of the corona is vanishingly small: 3×10¹⁴kg. In comparison, only 1/10 of the mass of Mount Everest: 3×10¹⁵kg! And only 1/10000th the mass of Earth’s atmosphere: 5×10¹⁸kg
So the total energy here: 1/2mv², is negligible on a solar scale. Therefore, we are entitled to dismiss its radiative effects on the solar system.

Zeke the Sneak says:
December 23, 2010 at 3:33 pm
I see. A mental temperature gradient graph is easy for anyone to picture. And is it normal for such incredibly steep temperature troughs to exist as a body radiates heat? Can you give any examples in nature of an incredibly cool surface sandwiched between such enormous temperatures? What is keeping the heat from filling in that trough?
Your comment is very dismissive of this tenuous 3 million degree corona; I think you would miss it a little here on earth if it were gone.

—
Most radiation of solar origin affecting earth emanates from the photosphere, and not the corona. If there corona were gone, the change in the radiative energy flux incident on earth would be changed by only a small, fractional amount.
Some confusion arises because, even though the corona is warmer than the photosphere, the corona is also very much less dense. If the gas in each layer were the same density, heat would easily conduct from the hotter region to the cooler one (as most people would expect, i.e. heat would flow down the temperature gradient). But the photosphere and corona are not the same density – in fact the photosphere is something like 10^12 times more dense than the corona – and this makes it difficult for the tenuous corona to affect the temperature of the photosphere in any meaningful way.