Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
[Update: New York City got more snow in October 2011 than ever before in recorded history, according to the NY Daily News (including some good photos). Special thanks to WUWT commenter NikFromNYC who posted this photo link of Snow near GISS HQ last evening.]
If the forecasts hold up, New York City, home to NASA-Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will get up to a few inches of snow, unprecedented for October.
Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are. And, what is more foolish (in a healthy enjoyable way :^) than Seinfeld? We never discovered how Kramer supported himself – perhaps he was one of the climate scientists at GISS?
NOTE: The above image is a file photo from Google images. If any WUWT reader has a link to a photo of the GISS building taken during the current snowstorm, please post it and we will replace the image. It would also be nice to have a contemporary photo of the Occupy Wall Street folks coping with a little snow.
For background on the Seinfeld link, see this WUWT article:
NASA GISS, a division of Vandelay Industries?
The more I see signs that we might be heading in the cooling period, the more I think this article that I first saw on Steve Goddard’s site a while back might have been on to something.
I hope that the OWS people have enough common sense to NOT have a carbon monoxide poisoning incident. Will somebody, unaware of the danger of use a small hibachi, or something similar, to stay warm in their tent for the next night or two, go through the the horrific experience, either debilitating or death such poisoning causes.
Of course, if such happens, it will probably be somebody else’s fault … IMHO
Mark S says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
Yawn. Have you ever had an original thought?
I’m with Ira on this one –
“Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.”
While there may be some who would attempt to find minor fault with this article, the overall idea put forth by it is correct. That is the big difference – the links to a warm weather event as “proof” of GW had as their major fault the fact that the concept of what they were saying was wrong. Remember, one of the things GW was going to do would be eliminate snow in some places and our children would grow up not knowing what snow was like.
The warmer the planet gets, the colder it will be. Huh?
“Warming causes cooling” – even those grade school children that Gore mentions in his movie aren’t buying it.
This is all completely consistent with Global Warming, and it is worse than we thought.
Nothing like a “warm” Atlantic and a La Nina to pump moisture up the eastern seaboard. A little cold from our friends in Canada and bingo. Wons happens. Can’t be snow you after all, that was supposed to never happen again.
From the AP:
NEW YORK – Authorities say New York City’s Central Park is seeing its snowiest October on record.
National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro says 1.3 inches of snow had fallen at the park as of 2 p.m. Saturday, making this the snowiest October there since records began being kept in 1869. That’s also a record for the date of Oct. 29.
Vaccaro says it’s the first time observers at the park have measured an inch or more of snow.
Snow was continuing to fall in the city Saturday, meaning the record will grow.
The snowfall is part of a storm that’s expected to dump anywhere from a dusting of snow to about 10 inches along the East Coast.
Can we get Hansen to measure the depth of the snow?
I bet he measures about 15 cm. That would be about… six inches?
stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm
“Yes, no-one doubts the world has warmed, do they? The BEST results were just nothing because you already know that the world is warmed, don’t you? And that’s why you never bother tiresomely hyping cold weather. Oh, wait.”
The cooling comes AFTER the warming, Stevo.
That it is so rapid is not astonishing at all; a system with positive feedbacks (let us assume they exist) must have a hysteresis (for feedback gains smaller 1; and we already know the gain can’t be bigger), and once the outside input (solar) overcomes the hysteresis, the flip into the opposite direction is amplified by the same positive feedbacks that held the system up for a while whilst the input was already weakly pulling in the other direction.
Positive feedbacks that amplify warming must also amplify cooling, in other words.
Mark S,
Collide-a-scape is certainly not a skeptical blog, or anything close. However, it is one of the less obnoxious blogs.
stevo: there has been no acceleration in global warming since the LIA, which blows a pretty big hole in the CO2 conjecture. The trend is declining, as the green line shows.
Web cams are available here: http://nyctmc.org/
There are traffic cameras at Broadway and Pine and Broadway and Vesey. No snow as of 7:28 pm
stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Yes, no-one doubts the world has warmed, do they? The BEST results were just nothing because you already know that the world is warmed, don’t you?
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BEST, HadCrut, RSS, GIS all show no warming for the past decade….
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/the-mischaracterization-of-skepticism-and-the-misapplication-of-the-skeptic-label/
Mark S says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
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Mark S,
?Nuance? . . . . ? Collide-a-Scape : ) ? . . . . ? WUWT : ( ?
That was decidedly non-nuanced. But was definitely snarky. Confused much?
If you are trying to drum up some traffic that KK’s joint sorely needs . . . . your nuanced message of will likely reduce KK’s traffic.
John
Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming.
————-
Ira you are over simplifying things. People are counting the number of cold and hot events and comparing the counts to see if there is a trend.
People are also making judgements about the degree of extremity of extreme events relative to their memory of past extreme events. This is not reliable by itself, but if extra extreme happens on a regular basis it does constitute evidence.
So photos of restaurants showing snow is not that useful. It’s just as useful as showing a picture of the Texas drought.
What would be useful is comparing the number and extent of extreme snow events with the number and extent of extreme drought events.
James Hansen said Manhattan would be under water not under snow.
He also said there would be a strong El Nino in 2011.
Hey Jim look out the window, that white stuff isn’t sea level rise that you predicted a few years back, that is snow.
To all of you who are skeptical of this post. First of all it is snowing in NYC so it isn’t just a forecast based on computer models anymore. Second of all it is the most snow in Oct in recorded history in New York. Third, the reason it hasn’t snow in Oct much in NYC isn’t because of lack of precipitation, it rains quite a lot in NYC in October. The reason it does snow is the temperature hasn’t been cold enough. The idea that warming causes cold is just silly on the face of it.
And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.
Betapug says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm
“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” New York Times, July 17, 1969
Amazing what you can find on this site! What was the NYT’s position on Ether? What is it now?
I’m pretty certain that running into Mike Tyson’s fist at the end of the Charlie Sheen roast did some serious damage to poor stevo.
Smokey, are you blind? Your graph shows clearly the very acceleration that you’re claiming isn’t there.
“BEST, HadCrut, RSS, GIS all show no warming for the past decade….”
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.
Ira may be hyping a book, but at least I have the option of not purchasing his book.
What the other guys are asking for is not voluntary.
JJ says: “This is all completely consistent with Global Warming, and it is worse than we thought.”
Quite. And it shows the need for a masive increase in Climate Research funding without any question of how the funds are spent. Like everything else, more spending, higher taxes.
Think of the grants that will come out of this. /sarc
We had our six inches of global warming last week. More to come.
Stevo says: “A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.”
Hmmm…
Explain then why in 1988, Dr. Jim Hansen, with less than a decade of temperature data to support him, went before congress to claim that he had seen the effects of AGW, and pushed his three scenarios?
Of course lack of more than 10 years of data may explain why they had to rig the air conditioning in the hearing room to get the point across.
Transcript:
This transcript excerpt is from PBS series Frontline which aired a special in April 2007.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.
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It’s 1/3 of the record…..
LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:53 pm
And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.
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Ira, at no point, ever made any representation of the “GISS NASA” position.
Position, being the operative word.