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?
stevo;
But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.>>>
I love that argument. Let’s see, we’ve been on a warming trend since the 1600’s. So… the last century was warmer than the century before. The warmest in hundreds of years in fact. So, instead of talking about which was the warmest, let’s talk…by how much?
Arguably, there was a ten year time period in the 1930’s to 40’s that was warmer, depending on whose temp record you use. But let’s use Jim Hansen’s which after adjustments, more adjustments, some fiddling, then some adjustments, shows this last ten years is the warmest on record…by a few one hunfredths of one degree. Oooooh. I’m scared.
Let’s look at that through an analogy that everyone understands. Money.
Let’s say on day one I stuff $100 into my mattress. On day 2, I stuff $100 into my mattress. On day 3, I stuff $100 into my mattress, and so on for 100 days. I’ve now got $10,000 stuffed into my mattress. On day 101, I stuff one penny into my mattress. On day 102, I stuff one penny into my mattress. And so on for 100 days. At the end of 200 days, I’ve got $10,001 in my mattress.
It would be technically accurate to say that over the last 100 days, I’ve had more money in my mattress than EVER BEFORE. In fact, the last ten days, I’ve had more money than at any time in the last 200 days. Again, completely accurate. And, totaly meaningless. The extra ten cents would not be missed for a moment if I took the money out of the mattress to spend it. In fact, I wouldn’t even bother looking for it if I noticed it was missing.
So…the warmiong of the last few hundred years? Sure, let’s go with it is the warmest ten years on record. Completely meaningless. Now the warming since the LIA until now? Take that away from us and you’ll get the downside of climate change really, Really, REALLY fast, because we’ll have something called massive crop failure, famine, and deaths from cold that make any disaster of recent memory look like tiddly winks.
But keep counting those last few hundredths of a degree. they’re like my last ten cents of savings. Can’t be bothered trying to find it (if it is there at all) because it is meaningless.
Tom’s is and always was THE WORST.
Fries of greasy, limp paper mache. Burgers of shredded cardboard.
Strictly GISS-quality.
When James Hansen made his prediction about the West Side Highway in Manhattan being underwater by 2028, it is a pity that the reporter did not stop to ask the (now-obvious) question: “Will the water be in liquid state (e.g. rising up from the river) or will it fall from the sky in solid state (as snow)?”
Smokey doesn’t know the difference between England and the whole planet. Get yourself a globe, kid, and see if you can find England on it. Come back and tell me, does it occupy a) a large part of the globe, or b) hardly any of it?
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. ”
Two decades is proof postive of warming then? 1976-1998.
1940-1976 and 1999-2012 cooling. For one third of my life it has been warming and for two thirds cooling.
stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 6:14 pm
lol, thanks stevo. That was quite an argument. It is because it is but obviously you’re too simple to understand it is because it is.
I think you should come back with something more substantial than that. Of course I can’t tell what the least squares trend is….. just look the formula up. But, here is a fact that is obvious to anyone else, my arbitrary time constraint is every bit as valid as your arbitrary time constraint.
But, hey, I’m a generous guy…… here is a 30 yr trend in the midst of exponentially increasing atmospheric CO2….. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1944/to:1974/plot/gistemp/from:1944/to:1974/trend See how it correlates?……. Me either. Oh, wait!!! Maybe its gotta be 100 yrs or so…… pphhhhttt…. simplistic…. that’s a word.
I think the most important connection is the proximity to Columbia University, with the Frankfort School connection.
stevo says:
“Smokey doesn’t know the difference between England and the whole planet.”
The more stevo comments, the less intelligent he appears to be. The chart I provided has temperatures for Copenhagen Denmark, Washington DC, London England, New York City, Minneapolis Minnesota, Geneva Switzerland, St. Petersburg Russia, and Berlin GDR. Maybe not the whole planet, but more than half the earth’s total land area.
There has been no acceleration of the natural warming trend since the LIA in any of those cities, despite a ≈40% increase in harmless, beneficial CO2. So much for stevo’s wild-eyed belief system.
Those pesky facts always get in the way of the alarmist contingent’s failed assumptions, the same way that Occam’s Razor, the scientific method, transparency, and the null hypothesis do. The entire cAGW scare is built on always-inaccurate computer models. But reality and empirical evidence trump every model, and the planet is clearly telling us that CO2 is not a problem.
Gail Combs says:
Oh heck let’s just occupy K street!
My most fervent hope is for someone new to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania street, or Ave, come January, 2013. If fear for the future of humanity if this does not come to pass. I see about an 80 year cycle going on here, politically speaking. Do the math.
Well, its still unseasonally cold in Sydney. Coldest October in 50 years, apparently.
If U guys up north have had enough of the whole global warming thing, can we have some down here?
Smokey says…
“The more stevo comments, the less intelligent he appears to be.”
It could, perhaps, be coined, The Lack Effect.
When are we going to get a guest post from you Smokey?
evanmjones says:
October 29, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Tom’s is and always was THE WORST.
Fries of greasy, limp paper mache. Burgers of shredded cardboard.
Strictly GISS-quality.
LOL!!
“stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 6:14 pm
But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.”
As a retired physics teacher, let me try to explain things from a different perspective. I will define displacement and velocity in the process. Displacement is the change in position. So if you started at sea level and climbed to the top of Mount Everest, your displacement would be 29,029 feet up. Now suppose you rapidly reached the top in 1998 and then started to slowly walk down at the rate of 10 feet per year. Velocity is the rate of change of position. So in this example, the velocity is 10 feet per year down. Now if you walked down for 12 years, your velocity would be down, even though you would still be very high up during those 12 years.
So it is perfectly possible to be high up (warmest ten year period), and at the same time be going down (or possibly cooling in our analogy).
By the way, according to the HADCRUT3 record, 1998 was the warmest year and 2011 so far, to the end of August, it is the 11th warmest. See: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Since it does not look good to have 15 years of cooling for certain people, the suggestion is made that 15 years is no longer a good yardstick and 17 years is needed. And Trenberth talks of “20 years or longer” for some other purpose. I think I know why.
Wonder if the GISS unit has the curtains closed so it doesn’t remind them.
Also, on the topic of Seinfeld references, I’m seeing a hilarious pattern here with the Jim Hansen/Kramer likening.
Boss: ” Kramer, it’s not working out.You’re fired.”
Kramer: ” But I don’t work here.”
Boss : ” That’s why it’s so hard to fire you.”
Taxpayers: ” Hansen, it’s not working out. You’re fired.”
Hansen: ” But I don’t work here.” ( Apparently.)
Taxpayers : ” That’s why it’s so hard to fire you.”
Werner Brozek;
I really like the climbing the mountain analogy, thanks! May I have your permission to use it? If not, I shall just steal it. 😉
I thought of another one that I’m still working on because my “money” explanation is apparently too long to hold anyone’s attention. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
I throw a ball up in the air. At the peak of the ball’s trajectory, it has a vertical velocity of zero. If I measure the vertical velocity of the ball at multiple points along the trajectory prior to the peak, and then extrapolate the resulting curve, the only conclusion I can come to is that the ball’s velocity tends to zero, and it will simply stop and remain stuck in the air.
Or maybe the way to go is to explain that at the peak of the ball’s trajectory, it is by definition, higher than it ever has been before….
The latter makes the point in a more realistic manner I suppose, I just like the image of the ball stuck in the air more. LOL.
Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.
=============================
Well ain’t that the kettle calling the pot black. Isn’t that what “your side” has been doing to the point of fraud over these past years? Namely, “The only actual fact is a weather [climate] forecast.”
For NYC this is not the 6 to 10 they predicted on the coastal plain before Halloween…truly an extreme, extreme, EXTREME event in a “warming world”, right???
So your requested photos of Gavin Schmidt smirking somewhere nearby in a coffee shop near NASA GI** headquarters may disappoint.
But no problem….just check out some webcams or photos tomorrow a little to the NE of the Big Apple and you will get plenty of the snow pics that you need….in OCTOBER (barely Autumn in the NH) next to a warm Atlantic….in a “warming” world.
And in closing, check out the “actual facts” of this snow emergency in real time.
“… Travel is not recommended tonight across southwest New
Hampshire… western Massachusetts and north central Connecticut…
Bands of heavy snow continued to fall across the region as of 10
PM… with snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour. The heavy wet
snow will result in tree damage and widespread power outages. The
intensity of the snow will begin to diminish after midnight.
This is an extremely dangerous situation as the heavy
accumulation of snow will make some roads impassable
overnight… and downed trees will block some roadways. There may
also be live wires down. Non-essential travel is highly
discouraged tonight.”
==================
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I just heard a Weather Channel guy say all this snow was a sign of global warming!!
My hope is that this is the first of many heavy snowfalls for the Northeast.
Two feet. Plainfield MA. Check out the obs from Plainfield. 26 degrees F in OCTOBER. They have recorded 24 inches. Incredible.
… Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 8 am EDT Sunday…
* locations… southern New Hampshire… western and central
Massachusetts as well as northern Connecticut.
* Hazard types… heavy wet snow and strong winds.
* Accumulations… 12 to 18 inches of snow… locally up to 2 feet
in the higher elevations in northwest Massachusetts
* timing… the heaviest snow with snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches
per hour will diminish from west to east between midnight and 4
am.
* Impacts… heavy wet snow and strong winds will result in tree
damage… power outages… and Road closures. Some roadways will
be impassable.
==============
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
15″ in Penacook, New Hampshire. The forecast was first for 5-10 and then 6-12. We seem to be in the center of the snow band so far.
I was busy updating the Rossi post and didn’t have a chance to clear the snow board. I wasn’t expecting so much!.
There’s a very good chance this will be the deepest snow fall all season.
We still have power, a lot of folks don’t. There have been a number of fickers, some enough to confuse the television.
“davidmhoffer says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Werner Brozek;
I really like the climbing the mountain analogy, thanks! May I have your permission to use it?”
Yes, by all means use anything I may write! I view the WUWT site as a means to get ideas that we can use elsewhere such as letters to the editor of our local paper, etc. As far as your ball in the air is concerned, neglecting air resistance, the upward speed at 1.0 seconds before the top equals the downward speed at 1.0 seconds after the top. So this cannot be used with the present scenario with 1998 being the warmest year. Otherwise the 1990s would have had to be warmer than the 2000 to 2010 period. That is why I intentionally said the rise was rapid and the descent slow, which is exactly how it happened temperature wise.
Here is this very night when it snowed so early in the year in Manhattan, this 29th day of October in the year 2011, looking up through snow on the sidewalk across Broadway from Tom’s Diner:
http://i.minus.com/iNdtgAJtgo4C4.jpg
-=NikFromNYC=-
Video of the Heavy Snow Breaking Tree Branches in New Jersey
NikFromNYC says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:31 pm
Great picture, not quite enough for a hockey game I guess.
Part 1 Freak Snowstorm in NYC – October 29, 2011
Part 2: It’s really coming down now!: Freak Snowstorm in NYC – October 29, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gJRsEeHWgA&feature=related
savethesharks says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Looks like you might have a contender for what we had here in Minnesota back in 1991
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Halloween_blizzard
Duluth ended up with 37 inches, Mpls/St Paul 28 inches , in SE MN where I am the snow fall was smaller, but we started with 2-3 inches of ice. Bismark SD hit -10 F breaking the daily record by 16 degrees. We got another big hit at the end of Nov., 12-18″ over most of the state. Never saw real dirt from Halloween until damn near Easter