As the snow piles up over the Northeast, it is clear that global warming or climate change has caused this storm. Please take the opportunity to write up a prospective/perspective article as comments and I will combine them into the most coherent narrative for the folks at the New York Times or Washington Post to use in their newspapers. Note, you may use anonymous sources or experts in the field to come up with testimony. You may/should probably include anecdotes from storm-weary travelers who have never experienced anything like this before. Also, bonus points will be awarded to those that incorporate climate model predictions, which are almost always spot on when it comes to “forecasting” these “extreme events”. We will compare our efforts to what the elites ensconced in Washington, New York City, Boston, and London come up with.
Note to the blog police: this exercise is meant to be illustrative of the contortions that the media on both sides of the Atlantic have undergone to rationalize “winter weather”.
So far, Wade has set the standard for best journalism.
Update December 29, 2010: Time Magazine does not disappoint: blizzard is a sign of global warming!
I was alerted to an opinion piece in NYtimes, by Judah Cohen the director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm.
In a nutshell, he sells the “cold is global warming/climatechange/climatedisruption” by saying that:Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia. which is responsible for the Jet Stream changes which are responsible for the cold northern winters, because of extra moisture that precipitates into snow at low temperatures.
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The “ignored cycle” he proposes sounds to me like the recipe for the new ice age : cold is pushed down from the arctic creating vast snow landscapes and the increased albedo lowers the temperatures further. He has been seduced by the anomalies and has forgotten that H2O at 0C crystallizes and stays crystalline below that. It makes no difference if the surface temperature is -4C or -44C, snow stays put and albedo increases over all the area that is snow covered. Even a 30C winter anomaly at the north pole will not melt the ice in winter. Come spring the large cold area will reflect back the sun at the lower latitudes diminishing the real energy that can go into the north pole, which will slowly recover its lost ice, as there is indication it is happening now.
At the same time the oceans have been cooling not heating as he claims.
Since this is starting earlier and ending later he is describing how from a warm world the earth is turning into an ice age world.
Maybe he has found why there are periodic ice ages, i.e. that global warming causes ice ages. It is evident that from a temperature curve that is going up in time to go into an ice age where the temperature is going down in time one passes through a plateau. We are now ten years at least at a plateau. Lets hope it will be a little ice age and not the slide into the long freezing times that the ice core records show.
Moderator: there is no “Continue reading” link , or “number of comments” link to enter the comments section. One has to hit the headline.
Climate Change: Creationism for statists.
I asked Reindeer expert Mr S Claus what his first hand opinion of this blizzard was.
He categorically stated,” He did not want to be caught out in it but that is his business!”
There you have it,” a cold blizzard that is holding up transport in this global region.”
“And what effect do you think a global blizzard would have considering this one has been cold.”
S Claus.” Oh I think a global blizzard would be extremely bad and cold for transport!”
“Well as it happens, our computer predicted this exact problem. By adjusting some inputs and extrapolating the answer we have determined that a global blizzard could occur on the 1st of April.
And we have expert testimony that this would be bad and cold!
The weather last summer was hot
And so it’s Global Warming we got
Now the winter is cold
And the experts, we’re told,
Say that weather is climate…NOT!
(BTW 8-12″ of fresh snowmageddon here in wintery western New Hampshire)
Apparently “Winter” has not been peer reviewed and therefore is not to be noticed.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 26, 2010 at 7:52 pm
If the warm air were not invading the Polar regions en masse, the Arctic cold would not be getting down here with such regularity.
The heat from the warmer air is lost to space in the Arctic night.
i.e. – the barn door is open for the stored heat in our oceans to escape Planet Earth, no global warming cause is needed.
There is an added dimension to the Jet Streams forced further towards the equator: It is the reach of the loops which has stretched, not so much that the loops are displaced. For those who have been watching them intently, they have grown ever longer as measured by total latitude spanned.
The NE Blizzard is the elongated Jet Stream latitudinal span in action. We saw much the same in last weeks Pacific Storm, proving that the elongation is able to exist over time.
There is no global warming about it except for those in the path of the warm air headed out the skylight at the top of the world.
Eventually, even that well runs dry.
“Note, you may use anonymous sources or experts in the field to come up with testimony.”
Well, if we can we use unconfirmed reports of alleged activities from unnamed sources, it should fit right in with their narriative.
The New York Times article proves that global warming theory can accurately predict anything – after it’s happened.
this is a ridiculous post and should be removed.
just because Mr. Watts is away doesn’t give (some?) of you (know you who are) the rights to “post away.”
While it’s nice to see a few more articles then usual, some of these are lacking in many areas, and look kinda foolish.
/just sayin’
[ryanm: you mean me? please expound on your criticisms!]
Here’s an article printed here in New Zealand about the UK’s cold winter being because of global warming:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10696652
[ryanm: this research paper is worse than you can possibly imagine. nightmare in fact…]
Special Report by TryingTimes Science Reporter Jack Ace
The alleged December 2010 northeast blizzard has raised questions among some readers about the settled science of human-caused climate change, formerly referred to as global warming. I contacted a spokesman for NASA GISS, who refused to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the press due to federal FOIA restrictions. She explained that the alleged snow was not at all what it appeared to be.
“First of all,” she said, “weather is not climate, unless you gather a bunch of it all together and then it is, especially when it defrosts and becomes warming.” She assured me that what appears to the layman to be snow is actually compressed CO2. “As predicted by the IPCC, atmospheric levels of CO2 are so high, due entirely to human burning of non-renewable fossil fuels, that these carbon gasses can no longer be absorbed by the air and are precipitating out as white flakes that look and feel like snow, but are actually dry ice. In compliance with our long-range plans, road maintenance departments throughout the northeast are shoveling the CO2 flakes and will truck them to several abandoned mines where these dangerous carbon precipitates will be sealed in recycled soda bottles and thereby re-sequestered.”
In a related development, the long planned January 1, 2011 declaration that 2010 is the warmest in the 131 year history of climate, has been postponed until April 1, 2011, when they have been assured all the CO2 snow will have been shoveled and re-sequestered. The spokesman informed me there will be more good news on April 1st. The alleged blizzard actually precipitated most of the CO2 out of the atmosphere. CO2 levels will therefore stabilize and may decrease in the coming years. NASA is preparing to announce that their actions have averted runaway warming. They have revised their predictions and are now confident that global temparatures will level off and even begin to decline in coming decades. 2010, the warmest year in history, will usher in a new period of climate stabilization and, dare I say it, global cooling! Although I am not an acutal scientist, my years as a science reporter convince me that NASA’s flakey CO2 explanation is consistent with the latest climate research and GISS predictions.
The people who make the “more snow = global warming” argument generally omit the key fact: Places where precipitation occurs as snow are colder than places where it occurs as rain.
Aw, come on! We have to write fiction?
I lost a three year legal battle because I could not come up with lies to throw at the other side. They could do it all day. I failed miserably.
Sob . . .
Dr. James Hanson, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NASA’s leading climate scientist stated in response to questions regarding the eastern seaboard blizzard of December ’10 saying, “Every climate model initialized with (S)ensivity set to “for the children” and (i)teration set to “rare and exciting” yielded sigmaT^4/Si = Major New England snow storm. Improperly initialized models would, of course, produce highly variable and perhaps erroneous results.”
May I offer (my emphasis):
From the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007:
Working Group II: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability
Chapter 14: North America
14.3 Assumptions about future trends
14.3.1 Climate
Recent climate model simulations (Ruosteenoja et al., 2003) indicate that by the 2010 to 2039 time slice, year-round temperatures across North America will be outside the range of present-day natural variability, based on 1000 year Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM) simulations with either the CGCM2 or HadCM3 climate models. For most combinations of model, scenario, season and region, warming in the 2010 to 2039 time slice will be in the range of 1 to 3ºC. Late in the century, projected annual warming is likely to be 2 to 3°C across the western, southern, and eastern continental edges, but more than 5ºC at high latitudes (Christensen et al., 2007: Section 11.5.3.1). The projected warming is greatest in winter at high latitudes and greatest in the summer in the south-west U.S. Warm extremes across North America are projected to become both more frequent and longer (Christensen et al., 2007: Section 11.5.3.3).
Are you feeling warmer yet?
anna v says:
December 26, 2010 at 8:34 pm
I was alerted to an opinion piece in NYtimes, by Judah Cohen the director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm.
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No comments, as they know there is no substance.
I really hope there are a few brave and honest individuals left at NYT who will make public what is going on behind the scenes.
The following comment has been thoroughly “pee reviewed.”
Don’t eat the yellow snow!
Geoff Sharp says:
December 26, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Recent reduced solar output has meant much lower levels of EUV have been with…
There has not been MUCH LOWER levels of EUV. At each solar minimum EUV is low. Perhaps at this one, EUV was 15% lower than at the previous one, although the calibration may not be good enough to show this conclusively.
I think it would be hard to beat George Monbiot’s explanation.
First you need to return to his article of Jan 2009 (during our 1st of the record 3 cold winters in a row), “I have spent the last two evenings skating…the exhilaration of this primal game was shaded with sadness: all of us knew that this time might be our last…The critics [of man-made climate change theory]use every snow flurry or frozen puddle as evidence of the collapse of global warming theory…The thought that I might never skate outdoors again feels like a bereavement. I pray for another cold snap, even though I know it will bring all the nincompoops in Britain out of their holes, yapping about a new ice age…Is there any other subject on which journalists can make such magnificent idiots of themselves and still keep their jobs?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/climatechange-weather?INTCMP=SRCH
Now fast forward to 20 December 2010 (the coldest UK December in 100 yrs and coldest Christmas since records began):
Headline: “That snow outside is what global warming looks like”
“There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the last two years in the UK are the result of heating elsewhere. With the help of the severe weather analyst John Mason and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, I’ve been through as much of the scientific literature as I can lay hands on . Here’s what seems to be happening.” [sounds like Monbiot himself has worked it all out]
“The global temperature maps published by Nasa present a striking picture. Last month’s shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon” [read again RAGING FIRES!] – moves into discussion of atmospheric circulations and Arctic ice melt.
Then most brilliantly, he asks: “So why wasn’t this predicted by climate scientists?”
Oh dear, did the climate models fail? All the time, we thought global warming was giving us only milder winters.
But: ” Actually it was predicted, and we missed it.” So someone conveniently found that critical prediction lost in a bottom draw somewhere. A pity the UK’s Met Office didn’t hear about it. Otherwise, they might have advised the government to prepare for colder winters.
No doubt, there’s a whole cupboard full of forgotten predictions to deal with any new climate event. Perhaps George should start looking about now for the one that predicted ‘3 very cold winters followed by a series of mild winters again’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/uk-snow-global-warming?INTCMP=SRCH
I’ll try to let my main storyline echo the famous General Electric turboencabulator and the Allen-Bradley retro-encabulator. It could use a wider smear of jargon, but here goes.
“Here are the GRRR Institute for Climatological Paleo-Physics, our Georeactive Environmental Temperature Research for Extreme Arctic Latitudes program (GETREAL), has been working overtime to bring perfection to the previous generation of climactic models that predicted crudely characterized global warming as the most direct result of global warming.
The original models had a base warming of precalculated slope, superimposed by a jagged waveform generated by a stochastic simulation of pseudo-random processes, sublimely smoothed by statistical routines designed to produce just the right amount of smoothness to make the precalculated trend line visible through the noise.
Our new models supersede the originals in all the particulars, particularly the original’s propensity to predict warming as a measurable result of warming, when in fact our quasi-steady state projections show that warming can produce other effects, such as warming-induced cooling.
This happens when air that was originally warm picks up moisture, then is laterally transported by global atmospheric wind patterns into regions undergoing climatic regime shifts, sometimes with tipping points such as mountain peaks, where the air is chilled, thus releasing the moisture in solid and crystalline states instead of the liquid forms commonly predicted heretofore. Often these atmospheric transformations of warm air into cold air is due to atomic level collisions as the upper atmospheric jet streams carom off the Himalayas, Alps, or Andes, redirecting the flow in such a way so that the warm air is immeasurably colder than simulated measurements would indicate.
The end result of this process is that warmer temperatures leave much of the world buried in snow and ice, while local temperature measurements mis-indicate the fundamental cause, creating confusion and consternation in those trained on the earlier climate models.
Rest assured, the waist deep snows are the inevitable result of warming, and just like an egg frying on a Phoenix sidewalk, true cooling makes for a clear, runny, wet egg, while warming produces a bright, white, solid egg.”
What is with these folks invoking less Arctic sea ice as accuse of additional snow?
We are months past the Arctic sea ice minimum, and for a couple of months now every year’s record of Arctic sea ice is basically the same as every other year.
How to spin the story – see here:
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/23/potsdam-climate-instutute-now-says-to-expect-warmer-colder-winters/
“warmer colder winters” […] “Hard winters do not refute global warming, instead they more so confirm it.” […] “One PIK scientist says we’ll get warmer winters, while the other one says we’ll get colder ones. Well, which is it?” […] “So what can we conclude from all this? No matter what the climate does, they will be able to say their models predicted it. Falsification is impossible.”
More than a few good laughs reading that one.
rbateman says:
December 26, 2010 at 8:59 pm
There is an added dimension to the Jet Streams forced further towards the equator: It is the reach of the loops which has stretched, not so much that the loops are displaced. For those who have been watching them intently, they have grown ever longer as measured by total latitude spanned.
Hi Robert, Ulric sent me an interesting animation that backs up the one I normally use showing the loop displacement. How long this continues will be good to watch.
The “settled science” of Mankind Attributable Globally Inconstant Climate (M.A.G.I.C.) computer model projects that everything will predictable change in a reasonably chaotic pattern (sooner or later).
Whilst there are a number of novel suggestions for the NH polar jet excursions eg Cohen etc they do not explain the SH PFJ which it seems has brought snow to Tasmania.
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_sohem_00.gif