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?
LazyTeenager;
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.>>>
Ira’s comment wasn’t specific to NASA/GISS, it was a general comment about the warmist position, and yes, they have made it very clear, countless times, that they predict increased extreme weather events to be caused by warming. It is in the IPCC reports and countless studies and papers since then, not to mention that the MSM jumps to that conclusion almost automatically whenever an extreme weather event happens.
While Ira chose the site of NASA/GISS HQ to underscore the matter, regardless of what NASA/GISS may or may not say today, Hansen and Schmidt are both from NASA/GISS and both had major input into IPCC AR4. They continue to back those conclusions to this day (despite having NO explanation for why none of their predictions have come true)
Occupy GISS… and the EPA!
stevo says: and also @ur momisugly LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm
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.
==============================================================
Who says and how did they come to that conclusion? The fact is, there has been no warming in the last decade, and people continue to speak of a warming world. What’s even funnier, people equate current climatic events to a warming world, when, without any doubt, this earth hasn’t warmed in over ten years! It really can’t be both ways. If events today are occurring with more frequency, then if falsifies the doom and gloom of CAGW, because it hasn’t gotten warmer in the last ten years. What we should have seen was an increase in climatic events in the 90s, but we didn’t……. rest easy lads! I think we’re gonna be ok. Well, climate wise anyway, we’ve got work to do to undo the damage already done, but I think we can pull it off!
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.”
So you’ll stop yammering in 20 years when we’re deep in the solar minimum? Fine. Some are slow learners.
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.”
Have you ever heard about the concept of the falsifiability of a theory?
Re the extreme climate events, we just had posts about Stefan Rahmstorf’s newest convolut where he shows, by using his very own definition of trend, that the CAGW theory is predicting more extreme events in the future, whether warming or cooling, while not being affected by any extreme event in the past, say a warm maximum in 1890.
CAGW science has been reduced to a laughing stock… you should purge some of the more inept reserachers if you want to retain any semblance of a scientific approach.
And yes, the CAGW movement could continue their postnormal pseudoscience forever, I have nothing against it, as long as they pay for it themselves.
“Who says and how did they come to that conclusion?”
Anyone with an ounce of sense, and simple statistical analyses in which you derive the trend and the uncertainty on the trend helped them to come to that conclusion.
“The fact is, there has been no warming in the last decade”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
“without any doubt, this earth hasn’t warmed in over ten years”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
“because it hasn’t gotten warmer in the last ten years”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some. But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. >>>
Well how about 20 years then? 20 years ago I threw a snowball at my eldest son, knocking him to the ground and instigating a nasty scolding from the missus. This year I threw a snowball of the same approximate size, from the same approximate distance, and to ensure the experiment was valid, I made certain to use the exact same son. The snowball had very little effect.
I was going to dissect the snowball to see if there were any signs of global warming contained inside it, rings, anything…but eldest son elected to wash my face with it before I had the chance. This proves global warming, there can be no other explanation for the drastic reduction in snowball effectiveness.
RM says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:35 pm
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?
Because, just as Ira points out every warm event anywhere was proof of CAGW, so too, a decade is only meaningful when it appears to support CAGW.
Ira – “So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.” and right on cue, the silliness comes forth.
We must learn to forgive them, RM, because they know not how to stop being what they are.
LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm
“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.”
What is YOUR personal gain in promoting the CAGW nonsense?
Didn’t you guys read the other thread about the heat wave in Moscow? Extreme events are supposed to increase. The warming will cause more snow earlier in the season. It doesn’t matter that it’s unprecedented, it’s still consistent with a warming world. Weather is climate, and it’s worse than we thought.
Smokey says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Occupy GISS… and the EPA!
==================================================
No doubt, what most people fail to understand, is that every time the EPA shuts down or halts an electrical plant from producing energy, is that we thwart our production capacity. Less energy = less production. Less production = less wealth. Less wealth = less jobs. This is why our economy can’t rebound as it normally would. So, yes, if people feel the need to “occupy” something, the EPA is a great place to start.
“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.”
That is because the “current rate of change” is so very, very close to zero. Not catastrophically large in the warming direction. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.
Video
h/t Breitbart
>> 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. <<
As far as I can tell, their position is that ANYTHING is proof of global warming. Does that sum it up? Do they actually have a statement on what measurement would falsify AGW?
David Falkner,
You forgot to add: “/sarc”.
• • •
stevo says: “The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.”
The warming trend line has been the same since the 1600’s:
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
There has been no acceleration of the warming trend. Therefore, the CO2 conjecture is looking pretty damn weak. CO2 may add a little bit of warming, but obviously the 40% increase in that harmless and beneficial trace gas has not caused any problems at all – and it has provided plenty of verifiable benefits.
Smokey says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Occupy GISS… and the EPA!
___________________________________
Great idea but let’s add the USDA and FDA. They are just as corrupt and will also cost tax payers a bundle in the coming years.
Oh heck let’s just occupy K street!
The Guardian: “An Occupy Wall Street supporter braves the elements as snow falls over Zuccotti Park in New York. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/2011/oct/29/snow-storm-northeastern-united-states
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pixies/2011/10/29/1319917935064/Snow-at-Occupy-Wall-Stree-007.jpg
THANKS ALL for your comments, on both sides of this issue.
I particularly appreciated the link to New York City live webcams from
I checked the locations to see if any were near Broadway and W112th Street where GISS is located. The closest/best I found is Central Park West at 96th Street (http://nyctmc.org/google_popup.php?cid=329). As of 9:50PM NY time, it shows some snow sticking on the tops of parked cars and on the ground near them. But, the high-traffic street is merely wet. It will be nice to see if the snow sticks through the light of Sunday morning.
If any WUWT reader is in New York City, and if the snow sticks, I’d appreciate it if you’d walk or take the subway to Broadway and W112th Street and snap a photo of the GISS building for me to post here. Either provide a link in a comment or email the photo to me ira@techie.com
If I was still living in Brooklyn, and not here in Central Florida (where “snow” is a “four-letter word”), I would do it myself.
AdvTHANKSance
Stevo says “the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.”
Thermometers were invented at the end of the LIA and temps have generally rebounded since then. Therefore, some of the warmest years “directly measured” occurred fairly recently. This is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
The temperatures of the most recent decade are as much a portent as are the temperatures of the first week of June in the northern hemisphere. “Oh no! Last week was the warmest of the year! The trees are going to burst into flames and the lakes are going to boil!”.
I note that Central Park apparently received no snow between 2PM and 8PM:
… Record October snowfall amount set for Central Park NY…
As of 2 PM today… Central Park recorded 1.3 inches of snowfall.
——
… Record daily maximum snowfall set at Central Park NY…
As of 8 PM today… a record snowfall of 1.3 inches was recorded at
Central Park NY.
Protesters were expected to be occupying the North Pole by now, not just Wall Street.
What went wrong? Go Occupy the North Pole, folks.
Nice picture of OWS Protesters tents covered in snow.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/10/20111029195246572733.html
So, really cold over there then, during this anti-global warming storm?
It seems to be in the mid-30s all over the region at 10pm. Is that really record-breaking cold?
30 years warming, 30 years cooling which is blatantly obvious from the last 120 years data.
So now we cool, despite the efforts of those entrusted with the data to diddle the data to fit their theories.
Believing in ‘trends’ in climate is hopelessly childish and the believe will always be crushed by the next turn of the cycle.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s hard to believe in global warming when it’s cold. 1.3″ of snow in ny?